If something like the Marbella bud existed, we would now be planted in its very epicenter. Between Estepona and Torremolinos, with a microclimate that guarantees 300 days of sunshine a year and the centrifuged energies of fallen Liechtenstein aristocrats, big Hollywood stars, bankers, arms dealers and folklorists. All this weighs on the porch of the Marbella Club, the hotel that invented barefoot but not silent luxury. That then silence was not an object of desire.
The future of Marbella seems to be defined today by otherness. Now many boast of being “the other Marbella”. This marks a distance, not without a certain moral superiority, from the one that put the Costa del Sol on the jet set route, with its endless partying and its gold jewelry displayed in broad daylight on melanoma-brown skin. But those who arrived first do not enter that game. They simply put hedonism above everything, including etiquette and protocol. They devised a leisure for the upper classes. A live and let live for the rich that everyone executed in their own way.
A fishing village in Andalusia slipped into the route of the rich and famous in the 1950s. Dethroned princes and princesses, movie stars and bankers began to appear in its little streets. What was happening? It had all started years ago, in 1947, in this little bud, and with a man: Alfonso de Hohenlohe. A surname with guttural phonetics that was too harsh for the locals who ended up calling him “Prince Olé Olé”.
Alfonso de Hohenlohe-Langenburg was born in Madrid in 1924, son of Prince Maximilian and Princess Piedad Iturbe, who settled in the capital after having lost almost all of their fortune in successive wars and revolutions. He was baptized in the Royal Palace by Alfonso Alfonso studied in California, where he earned a fair reputation as a bon vivant. Handsome, with good manners, people skills and several languages, he made many friends in Hollywood, whom years later he would bring to his hotel with a simple argument: “Cape Antibes is not bad, but Marbella is much better.”
![Passage through the hotel garden, with an Andalusian patio in the background.](https://imagenes.elpais.com/resizer/v2/J7VKG5UGFVEJZGIZNX7ZFFRZAM.jpg?auth=713be1d97d4122d34dcc56b09b639f9ba5f2d0887a568cc933c98820417f02f0&width=414)
In 1947 he bought the Santa Margarita estate on the Costa del Sol for 150,000 pesetas and in 1954 he opened the Marbella Club hotel, inspired by California roadside motels, with a restaurant and 20 rooms. It was like a large family home that could not be compared to the palaces in Biarritz and Monte Carlo that his Central European friends frequented, who skeptically parked their cars when they first arrived. bentleys or their ferraris and they announced that they would not spend more than one night there. Count Rudolf Graf von Schönburg, better known as Count Rudi, another of the key men in this story along with his wife, Princess Maria Luisa of Prussia, says in his memoirs that it was common for them to change their mind the next day and ask for stay a week. “Alfonso had a special gift for making people feel good. His club was not exclusive, but those admitted were treated like royalty. You just had to show up showered and dressed clean for dinner,” the count writes in his memoirs. After a while his little motel would be the first luxury hotel on the Costa del Sol and a mandatory stop on the route of the jet set international.
![Intimate corner for meetings. The Marbella Club promotes the feeling of a large family home, with spaces designed for meeting and conversation.](https://imagenes.elpais.com/resizer/v2/BOC7ONDXXNDFJH6INQUE7Z64OM.jpg?auth=fc81848fa38b41e81d162a5189b74a1f941cee79ade885a5b56bc26c38bd758c&width=414)
Prince Alfonso had studied Agronomy and on his travels he loaded his suitcases with exotic seeds that quickly adapted to the microclimate of the estate. Seventy years later, which the hotel has celebrated this year, Leigh A. Barrett, its sustainability director, takes stock of the prince’s botanical obsession: “71 families of plants and 184 species coexist in the garden, 34 of them are native. from the European Mediterranean region, and the rest, 150, were introduced from Asia, Mexico, Central and South America, Madagascar, Australia and New Zealand. We have one Dracaena draco, that appears in the List of Wild Species under Special Protection Regime. In addition, we have registered 14 families of birds, five of reptiles and amphibians, and several of insects.”
![Piano in the bar, an intimate place to chat, listen to music or play a game of backgammon.](https://imagenes.elpais.com/resizer/v2/UMNXSYWRZBFIVMABHY6Z7TINBA.jpg?auth=e60e38611358fc5de5bd2e6f8665ddf8064e09b27edcd2d7696e942ce519083a&width=414)
Strategically located in that Garden of Eden was a much more mundane artifact: a telephone. In the fifties there were only two between Algeciras and Malaga. The speaking queue became a social event. People asked for their “conference” and prepared to wait: a connection with Malaga could take between one and two hours; with Madrid or any other European capital, between four and six, and that time was spent in the pool, the bar counter or the tennis court. And so it was until the mid-sixties. There were no newspapers and telegrams also took time to arrive. So, even if no one went there with that vocation, it ended up being a kind of retreat from the world.
![Close-up of a flower from the hotel's large garden.](https://imagenes.elpais.com/resizer/v2/VUQBILMQXRHPHHUWLG3UDESPTU.jpg?auth=3ce2fcad783d7e45221d49cab0a8826016652a0e601b48466b0435f25584d639&width=414)
According to the memoirs of Count Rudi, who ran the hotel between 1957 and 1983, there was also no running water and you had to go to Gibraltar to buy toilet paper. The restaurant’s menu could be the same for several weeks because it was difficult to find suppliers. Freedom and self-confidence were the attraction of that place. Luxury consisted of time, relaxed protocols, nature, good plans and better parties. Almost nothing. The Marbella Club began to play among the jet set for their silly games in the nearby mountains, their bonfires on the beach and their parties where anything was possible. Count Rudi says that one night during a costume party, Fulgencio Batista, the dictator of Cuba, almost suffered a heart attack when he encountered Simeon II, king of Bulgaria, disguised as Fidel Castro.
![Details of the Marbella Club reception, with the classic bell that is still used for communication between employees.](https://imagenes.elpais.com/resizer/v2/MTOX3JDJTVG3VKGTQSQMULN6DM.jpg?auth=cefd39c88ed7b68ca1177c5724451470074bface644f6cc30af63fa7a85e5e5a&width=414)
The helicopter of Adnan Khashoggi, the Saudi billionaire who became the richest man in the world, was itself a character in the Marbella Club of the eighties. Farrah Fawcett, Brooke Shields and Elizabeth Taylor landed on it from anywhere in the world. But in the last 40 years Marbella had mutated into something else. If in 1950 it had just over 10,000 inhabitants, in 1991 there were almost 90,000, most of them immigrants from the interior of Andalusia who changed agricultural jobs for hospitality and tourism. Count Rudi writes in his memoirs that in those years the noise of the bricks of those who “built without heart” was already beginning to be felt.
![Louis Albert de Broglie, the gardening prince who cultivates a garden of more than 100 species of tomatoes.](https://imagenes.elpais.com/resizer/v2/S244HQA2FJEDPHXJ442ANIWDVY.jpg?auth=83115e25b36c8006990b8f4b581e10ff52578d078e1326c2706f723e9a806b65&width=414)
In this context, the Marbella Club began to lose its shine and its splendid clientele began to retreat to other destinations. Prince Alfonso retired to make wines and ownership of the hotel passed to the Arab Al Midani family, and then to their sons, who, in the words of Count Rudi, only seemed “interested in selling to the highest bidder.” Alfonso de Hohenlohe died in Marbella in 2003, aged 79. His mark on the city is still clear and valuable, and has been applauded not only by princes and celebrities, but also by the Comisiones Obreras union, which recognized his role as a “model businessman.”
![Rudi's Bar, named after Count Rudi, is as legendary as the hotel itself.](https://imagenes.elpais.com/resizer/v2/4RE6BAE6CNG6PHYEWDZVBAQ3CA.jpg?auth=ec4b64273ecb65e06d1effe87fbb35f05bdb814490a45269465897cc6ceeea6b&width=414)
After passing through several hands, in 1994 businessman David Shamoon, who had always spent his summers at the Marbella Club, bought it and began a pharaonic renovation that included the purchase of Sheikh Al Midani’s residence, a secret fortress of which no one knew. Not even an inch had been seen until Lady Gaga stayed there in the fall of 2014 and broke the mystery by posting all the photos on Instagram. Jennica Arazi, daughter of Shamoon, today directs the destinations of the Marbella Club with the ambition of rounding off the concept of barefoot luxury by elevating two of its facets, biodiversity and the philosophy of well-being. To do this, she has bought the neighboring estate and has conquered another aristocrat, Louis Albert de Broglie, descendant of a Piedmontese prince and Charles X, who cultivates a garden with 300 species of tomatoes for the hotel’s botanical collection.
![Count Rudolf Graf von Schönburg, better known as Count Rudi, who ran the hotel between 1957 and 1983.](https://imagenes.elpais.com/resizer/v2/YF573LZXGJA7FHBLRRPTXI5A4A.jpg?auth=b00d476135a8dcb431c77d0f9e99fa1ee8611c10bf27ff34172650cb1162e9eb&width=414)
We find the “prince gardener” working barefoot in his garden under the midday sun. Taking off his shoes runs in the family, his mother has done it even in Versailles. For the Broglies, shoes are small prisons that kill the freedom of the spirit. The tomato plants begin to grow aligned between the sea and the mountains. Opposite stands a cabinet of curiosities, a kind of branch of Deyrolle, the Parisian temple of taxidermy frequented by surrealists such as Dalí and Breton, which the prince bought in 2001. The cabinet will store samples of the animal species that live in the hotel.
![Decorative element of the oven at the El Patio restaurant.](https://imagenes.elpais.com/resizer/v2/CN2S32LW6BCXPCGMVB5MHWNH3I.jpg?auth=d5c0bf21fe2f8e7edbb7fc1e1fd7fd980efda524d8b290235362a71b7f8fa133&width=414)
The Ana María farm, acquired by the hotel to “protect itself” from potential bad neighbors, belonged to Gunilla von Bismarck’s mother. Its 50,000 square meters will house a wellness ecosystem, until construction of the hotel expansion begins in five years, according to a project that has yet to be decided, as confirmed by Arazi. “That land had been empty for several years, for us it is a blank canvas to paint the new history of the Marbella Club, probably with new bungalows and more rooms with sea views, but, in the meantime, we are creating a wild garden. We have turned 70 and we have to start changing things because at that age the ailments begin.”
![Princess María Luisa of Prussia, a regular client of the hotel since its foundation.](https://imagenes.elpais.com/resizer/v2/JJQACS7OPFG2ROIK3GOBGDAZCA.jpg?auth=3eaec39f4948872bf22608a3c0e9fd31e2608e05b31d8b4c822c10110ad968d7&width=414)
The barefoot luxury of the fifties has evolved into deeper experiences, such as breathing deeply in balanced, noise-free ecosystems. “Our clients talk about inner peace, disconnection and relaxation, and the feeling of being in a bubble. And although they do not mention it explicitly, they talk about the revitalizing effect of reconnecting with nature and sleeping soundly in a large garden,” reflects Barrett. A luxury that Prince Alfonso was already looking for when he returned from his trips with suitcases full of seeds. “There are things here that will never change,” warns the owner.
![Room with a four-poster bed and dressed with linens and natural materials.](https://imagenes.elpais.com/resizer/v2/F6LXKOO52RFAFHWBENUHJBKWQA.jpg?auth=ab74be6c1b8de24507dc3aced51bbeac0a846b7c3930e5ac680b1ce1dd0622b4&width=414)
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