About Marbella

Marbella
Coordinates: 36°31′0″N 4°53′0″W / 36.516667°N 4.883333°W / 36.516667; -4.883333Coordinates: 36°31′0″N 4°53′0″W / 36.516667°N 4.883333°W / 36.516667; -4.883333
Country	Spain
Autonomous community	Andalusia
Province	Málaga
Comarca	Costa del Sol Occidental
Government
- Type	Mayor-council
- Body	Ayuntamiento de Marbella
- Mayor	María Ángeles Muñoz Uriol (PP)
Area
- Total	114.3 km2 (44.1 sq mi)
- Land	114.3 km2 (44.1 sq mi)
- Water	0.00 km2 (0 sq mi)
Population (2006)
- Total	124,332
- Density	1,088/km2 (2,817.9/sq mi)
Time zone	CET (UTC+1)
- Summer (DST)	CEST (UTC+2)
Website	www.marbella.es

Marbella is a town in Andalusia, Spain. It is situated on the Mediterranean Sea, in the province of Málaga, beneath the La Concha mountain. In 2000 the city had 98,823 inhabitants, in 2004, 116,234, in 2010 approximately 135,000.

Marbella and nearby Puerto Banús are important tourist resorts on the Costa del Sol. Marbella is especially popular with tourists from Northern Europe (including the UK, Ireland and Germany), Saudi Arabia, the U.A.E. and the U.S.A. Marbella is particularly known for the rich and famous, a very popular destiny for celebrities and wealthy people. It is also a major destination for luxury cruise ships and mega yachts which are also often docked in its harbour. Marbella is specially popular with those who like golf and marinas. In the area around the city there are concentrated many private estates and luxury hotels. Marbella also hosts a WTA tennis tournament on red clay, the Andalucia Tennis Experience.

From Marbella it is easy to reach other places, like Málaga and Algeciras, by bus. The area is also served by the A7 autovia, and the closest airport is at Málaga.

History

Archaeological excavations have been made in the mountains around Marbella, which point at human habitation in Paleolithic and Neolithic times. There are also remains of Phoenician and later Carthaginian settlements in the area of Rio Real. In Roman times, the city was called “Salduba” (Salt City^[1]).

Remains of the Roman bridge of Marbella

During Islamic rule, the Moors built a castle in this city. The name Marbella, which is derived from Marbil-la, dates from this Islamic era. The traveller Ibn Battuta characterised the town as “a pretty little town in a fertile district.”^[2] In 1485, the city fell to Christian forces.

In the 1940s, Marbella was a small jasmine-lined village with only 900 inhabitants. But this soon changed when Prince Max Egon zu Hohenlohe-Langenburg and his heir Alfonso de Hohenlohe experienced a problem with their Rolls-Royce in the vicinity. This first encounter with Marbella so impressed Alfonso that he decided to buy land commercially, marketing the area as a tourist destination. In 1954, he opened the Marbella Club Hotel; his son had recently returned from California and the hotel was loosely modelled on the motel style with lower pitched terracotta roofs among 23,000 trees.

Given Alfonso’s maternal membership in Spain’s titled aristocracy (his mother, Doña Piedad Iturbe and Scholtz, was the Marquesa de Belvis de las Navas), and his paternal kinship to the royal courts of Europe, the hotel quickly proved a hit with vacationing members of Europe’s ruling elites, and those privileged to socialise with them in casual yet discreet luxury. Don Jaime de Mora y Aragón, a Spanish bon vivant, brother to Fabiola, Queen of the Belgians, Adnan Khashoggi and Guenter Rottman, were frequent vacationers.

Street in Marbella, Spain 2005.

Typical was a gala held in August 1998 as a fundraiser at the Marbella club for AIDS relief NGO. Prince Alfonso presided, supported by the sons of his first marriage to Princess Ira von Fürstenberg, an Agnelli heiress who arrived with her own entourage; Princess Marie-Louise of Prussia (great-granddaughter of Kaiser Wilhelm II) who, with her husband Count Rudolf “Rudi” von Schönburg–Glauchau, would eventually take over the Marbella Club Hotel from Prince Alfonso; and socialite Countess Gunilla von Bismarck.^[3]

Sea side of Marbella

Hacienda de Toros, drawing by Philippe Derome, 1979

In 1974, Prince Fahd arrived at the city after having broken the bank of the Casino of Montecarlo.^[4] Until his death in 2005, he was a frequent and profitable guest at Marbella, where his retinue of over a thousand people spending petro-dollars was welcome, including the then-anonymous Osama bin Laden.

In the eighties, Marbella continued to be a destination for the jet set, with the most recognizable face being that of Gunilla von Bismarck. However, problems arose in 1987 when Melodie Nakachian, a daughter of Raymond Nakachian, a local billionaire philanthropist and the Korean singer Kimera was kidnapped, putting the city in the focus of the media.

In 1991, the builder and president of Atlético Madrid, Jesús Gil y Gil was elected by a wide majority as mayor of Marbella for his own party, the Independent Liberal Group (GIL in Spanish), promising to fight petty crime and the declining prestige associated with the region. Amongst other things, he used, as an international spokesman for the city, actor Sean Connery who later ended this relationship after his image was used for electoral purpose by Gil.

The city also experimented with extensive building activity under the administration of Gil, with critics stating that this construction was often performed without regard for the existing urban plan and thus new plans were stopped by the Andalusian government. Something of a maverick, Gil despised town-hall formalities instead ruling from his office at the Club Financiero. Criticism was levelled at Gil by the major parties of Spain (Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party and People’s Party) but this did not convince enough voters to oust him and Spanish celebrities continued to spend summers there. Gil’s GIL extended to other Costa del Sol towns like Estepona and across the Strait of Gibraltar to the Spanish African cities of Ceuta and Melilla.

This period brought an appraisal of the city but also investigations of corruption. Eventually, Jesús Gil was forced to resign in 2002 after being jailed for diverting public funds for Atlético. He was succeeded by Julián Muñoz, a former waiter then well-known for being romantically engaged with singer Isabel Pantoja with more than one hundred trials for corruption following. Muñoz was overthrown by his own party which elected Marisol Yagüe, a former secretary, as the new mayor. Muñoz and Gil took part in a scandalous debate on television where both accused each other of having robbed public funds.

The situation exploded in March 2006, when Yagüe was jailed as the city council was near bankruptcy. According to unsubstantiated testimony, Muñoz and Yagüe were puppets in the hands of Antonio Roca, a councilman who got the job after failing in private business and gathering substantial wealth while working as a public servant. While Yagüe was in jail, the city council was run by Tomás Reñones, a former Atlético Madrid football player, who ended up in jail as well. On April 8, 2006, the Spanish government decided to suspend the council, the first time such a course of action was taken in Spanish democracy [3].

After a short period of interim government, municipal elections were held in May 2007. The People’s Party gained a majority with 16 out of the total 26 councillors. The Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party has 7 councillors, the United Left (Izquierda Unida) has 1 and there are two independent councillors ^[5]. The Mayoress is Maria Angeles Muñoz, leader of the People’s Party in Marbella. The next municipal elections are to be held in May 2011.

Sights in and around Marbella

Salvador Dalí. Horse with rider, Marbella

• Arabian wall
• Bonsai museum
• Museo del Grabado Español Contemporáneo
• Old city centre
• Playa de la Bajadilla (beach)
• Playa de Fontanilla (beach)
• Puerto Banús, a marina built by José Banús where Rolls-Royces and Ferraris meet yachts.
• The Golden Mile featuring the Marbella Club Hotel and its beach club, as well as the late King Fahad’s palace.
• Encarnation’s Church (Iglesia de la Encarnación). Oldest church in the city situated in the old-town.

Notable residents

Medieval defensive walls of Marbella

• Antonio Banderas is a regular visitor to Marbella where he has a house in Los Monteros. He and Melanie Griffith have a daughter who was born in Marbella in 1999.
• In 1981 English actress Joan Collins accepted her career-making role in the hit prime time melodrama Dynasty while living in her Marbella vacation home.
• Sean Connery used to live in Marbella, near a golf course where he played daily when not filming. He left following disagreements with the local press, and now resides in the Bahamas where he plays golf much less frequently. He lent his image to the Marbella’s townhall until Gil used it for political goals.
• English writer Vincent Cronin has had a home in Marbella for decades.
• Arms dealer Monzer al-Kassar was a longtime resident until his imprisonment, and has been nicknamed “The Prince of Marbella”.
• Mark Langford, the former, multi-millionaire boss of The Accident Group who notoriously sacked most of his 2,700 staff by text message, died after being involved in a car accident in Marbella on April 11, 2007
• Actor Dolph Lundgren resides in Marbella with his wife and two children. They also have a home in London.
• English songwriter Richard Daniel Roman
• Porn star Linsey Dawn McKenzie
• Actor and comedian Mike Reid was living in Marbella at the time of his death on 29 July 2007. He was born in inner city London, England, and had lived for most of his life until retiring to Marbella a few years before he died.[4]
• Former dictator of Cuba, Fulgencio Batista, died in Marbella in 1973.
• Scottish footballer Andy Gray
• Mark Thatcher
• James Hewitt

Media references

‘Puerto Banús’ is one of the main touristic sites of Marbella.

Santiago Segura’s Torrente comedy film series took its second part Torrente 2: Misión en Marbella (2001, the highest grossing Spanish film ever) to Marbella, where the repulsive cop José Luis Torrente meets the kitsch inhabitants of the city in an intrigue of international politics.

Marbella was featured in the popular political thriller, Syriana. It was used as the location for a private party which an Arabian Emir hosts. Marbella was portrayed as an extremely affluent city with most cars at the entrance of the palace being very expensive. In the same year it appeared in Steven Spielberg’s Munich in a very similar context.

In 2006, there was an international advertisement advertising Marbella as a tourist destination. The song on the advert is aptly called Marbella and is performed by singer Cristie.

The Finnish 1985 comedy film Uuno Epsanjassa is situated in Marbella.

The beach-front in Marbella

Many other movies and TV programmes such as Nip/Tuck portray it as a playground for the rich.

ITV aired a TV programme in spring 2007 called Marbella Belles which portrays a series of British women who now live in Marbella with their rich partners.

Cast of Living On The Edge visit on the fourth episode of the first season.

It is also referenced in the stage play “Noises Off” by Michael Frayn. The character Phillip and his wife Belinda have been tax exiles in Spain. The character Gary thinks he and his guest are alone in the house, when he spots Phillip, and thinks he’s a ghost. Gary: “Hold on a second, you’re not from the other world!” Phillip: “Yes, yes, Marbella!”

Carlos Baute’s song “Colgando en tus Manos” mentions him and his love vacationing in Marbella and Marta Sanchez sings this line in their duet version of the song.

Simon Cowell for series 7 of the X Factor went to Marbella for his Judges House with the groups with Sinnita.