Marbella - A quick crash course.

Like or loathe it Marbella is Spain's most famous resort is set to enjoy another record breaking summer as tourists, celebrities and investors continue to the town. While the political situation in Marbella has changed recently, with a coalition of left wing parties booting out the right wing Partido Popular (and rasing a Rainbow Flag above the town hall that upset the conservatives) the combination of a superb microclimate and enviable lifestyle as well as a glitzy dash of designer brands and a constant stream of celebrities, from Hollywood starred A list to reality show Z list, means that Marbella can pretty much ignore the political bunfighting and get on with the serious business of having a good time.

 It's not all tourists and celebs, however. The past 12 months have seen the luxury residential property market show real growth. Internationally renowned as a playground for the rich and famous, Marbella boasts literally miles of stunningly beautiful beaches, a favourite spot for golf enthusiasts and has an enviable climate. Property values have historically been very high, and although the recent economic crisis resulted in a realistic realingment in prices, the past few months have seen values begin to rise as international investors have once again begun to look seriously attracted by the country’s low prices, investment opportunities and lifestyle. International property analysts have highlighted three prime areas for international investment – Madrid, Barcelona and Marbella. Foreign investors have be been attracted to Spain due to the ‘Golden Visa’ scheme – which grants automatic residency to non-EU citizens who invest €500,0000 thousand euros or more in Spanish property. This has has attracted a growing number of residency investors, mainly from the Far East, Middle East and Russia and Marbella Town Hall has been proactive in marketing the town, attending a variety of trade shows and exhibitions in the Middle East, Far East and Russia.

But first a little history. Marbella has been a town since the seventh century BC. The Romans were here of course, and called the place 'Salduba' (which is also the name of a well known bar at the entrance to Puerto Banus that had been there since roughly the same time). An original Roman bridge still stands surreally in the middle of the Puente Romano Hotel and a few kilometres away is the restored Roman villa at Rio Verde with its beautiful mosaics.

 A sleepy town during the period of Al – Andalus, Marbella was retaken my the Christians in 1485. The Plaza de los Naranjos (Orange Square) has been the focal point of the town since then and the Town Hall is still located there. Other historic buildings close by include the Museo de Grabado Español and the Church of Nuestra Señora de la Encarnacion and the old town itself is fantastically atmospheric with its cobbled streets, hidden plazas and great variety of bars, restaurants and boutiques.

 The modern history of Marbella started with the chance visit of a German aristocrat. Prince Alfonso von Hohenlohe was an his way to visit relatives in Sevilla in the 50s and needed to make a telephone call. He was told that no line would be available for several hours, so decided to take a picnic lunch under the pines close to the Finca Santa Margarita. Alfonso fell in love with the place, brought the land and opened a small lodge style hotel for his friends – The Marbella Club Hotel.

 The playboy prince, who dated actresses Ava Gardner and Kim Novak and married several times, soon had both the grand families of Europe and the rich and famous staying at the Marbella Club. Sophia Loren, Audrey Hepburn (who brought a house in nearby Guadalmina), Frank Sinatra, Elizabeth Taylor, Bridget Bardot, Gunter Sachs and Sean Connery were all regular visitors during the 50s and 60s. “The people I had met in Hollywood, in New York, in Europe, they were the roots, the bridge that brought people to Marbella and who made Marbella famous” explained Alfonso. He employed his cousin Count Rudi von Schonburg, who is still very much involved in the Marbella Club Hotel as well as flamboyant Spanish aristocrat and friend of painter Salvador Dali, Don Jamie de Mora y Aragon, who played piano for the guests. No ordinary tinkler of the ivories, the monocled and moustachiod Don Jamie was directly descended from 56 kings and the brother of the Queen of Belgium.

 In 1970 developer Jose Banus opened Puerto Banus with an inauguration attended by Prince Rainier and Princess Grace of Monaco as guests of honour and a young Julio Iglesias providing the entertainment. Puerto Banus quickly became a jet set destination with F1 World Champion often spotted playing backgammon in Sinatra's, while Rod Stewart and The Who's Kenny Jones hit the restaurants. The Saudis also arrived in numbers, with King Fahd building a huge palace while millionaire arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi moored his superyacht 'Nabila' in the marina and flew by helicopter to La Zagaletta, his huge private estate.

 Although some of the glamour went out of the town after the huge scale corruption of Mayor Jesus Gil and his GIL party, the past decade has seen Marbella back in the spotlight for all the right reasons. High profile events such as Marbella Luxury Weekend, which showcases top end designer fashions, good and some serious impressive yachts and cars, as well as the summer long Starlite Festival that this year features Lenny Kravitz, Enrique Iglesias and Lionel Richie attract major media coverage, as do the red carpet charity galas held by Antonio Banderas and Eva Longoria, now a regular fixture on every Marbella socialite's calendar.

And US First Lady Michelle Obama's visit to Marbella a few years ago made the front pages around the world. Marbella Town Hall estimated that her visit generated the equivalent of €800 million in media coverage!

 And then there is the TOWIE factor. Hit UK reality TV show 'The Only Way is Essex' picked Marbella for a summer special with spectacular results. Puerto Banus was soon overrun by Essex Boys and wannabieWAGs, provided a much needed shot in the arm for Puerto Banus. Restaurants such as La Sala and bars including the famous Linekers are 'must do' destinations for the hordes of fans wanting to imitate their idols or bump into a Premiership footballer or two and, though they might not be to everyone's taste, they certainly bring a dash of colour to Banus!

 Written off several times before as being past its sell by date, Marbella continues to attract a steady stream of the rich and famous. As playboy par excellence, the late Sir Dai Llewllyn once told me. “Marbella is like a hostess who, halfway through a party, goes upstairs and puts on a new outfit. The outfit may have changed, but the party continues!”

It’s coming home….again….maybe?

It’s the time every four years that all guys look forward to and most girls dread. A time of male bonding in the bar, proudly pulling on your footie top (that somehow seems a little tighter around the beer belly than the last time you wore it to watch Deutschland 2006) and popping out to see the match for a few hours, only to return several hours later, decidedly worse for wear and with your face painted red and white. Ah, the undefinable joys of following international football.

South Africa 2010 kicks off in Joburg on June 11 with the hosts against Mexico and for the following weeks it will be impossible to avoid the competition. It doesn't’t matter if you have Satellite or Spanish TV, the channels will devote hours of coverage to each teams’ chances, the expectations, the games themselves, a host of expert opinion and the after match autopsies of what went right or wrong.

And you can forget nipping out for the evening to get away from the World Cup. One of the major factors behind the number of people spending more and more time in Marbella is the cosmopolitan nature of the town. This is, however, a double edged sword. The quality of your dining experience will suffer for example. During the World Cup expect to find service in your favourite pasta place a little slow when Italy are playing, forget tapas when Spain take to the pitch and don’t even try to order escargots if France get beaten.

On the plus side if you are a football fan a place like Marbella can be magical during the World Cup, because someone always has a game. And South Africa has set up some mouth watering matches – England v USA and the “Group of Death” with Brazil, Portugal and Ivory Coast fighting to qualify for the knock out stages, while Spain, one of the pre – tournament favourites should cruise past Chile, Honduras and Switzerland in their group. And when Spain win a match you can forget all thoughts of sleep. I was driving through the Port in 1986 when they scored an injury time goal and I swear that the place shot 5 feet in the air…

But the match that the neutral supporter should be looking forward to is Holland v Denmark. Not so much for the action on the pitch but for the atmosphere – large amounts of Carlsberg and Heineken, and loads of liberated Scandinavian or Dutch beauties to hug when either side scores. A word of caution though – don’t try that tactic during any game when any of the Eastern European nations are playing. Hug the stunner from Serbia and you are likely to get a bullet in the back of the head from her large boyfriend at the bar.

You won’t run out of places to watch the matches either, so why not take in the games in a variety of locations? A tapas bar for the Spanish matches, an Italian restaurant when the Azzuri are playing and why not sample a little sushi when Japan are in action. Sitting with a cool beer in a beach bar watching one of the afternoon matches is also a unique pleasure, especially if you normally watch football on a wet Wednesday in Wigan. And as a neutral supporter you may even be adopted by a set of fans as unofficial mascot – which is why there is a photo of me somewhere in San Pedro wearing a massive orange hat and clutching a Heineken. I think that Holland may have been playing. And though I’m disappointed that Ireland were denied by the “Hand of Gaul” my liver will be breathing a sigh of relief. After St Patrick’s Day, the thought of more Guinness would have been too much for it!

Health concerns aside, with the skills of Messi and Ronaldo on show, plus the manic national support behind Spain and the usual white knuckle ride that following England entails, mean that South Africa 2010 will give you the perfect excuse to go football crazy for a couple of weeks!

Happy Birthday Banus!

Puerto Banus celebrates its 40th anniversary this month and the guest list for the official inauguration in May 1970 was a star studded event. Princess Grace and Prince Rainier of Monaco celebrated the opening of the Mediterranean’s first pleasure craft marina along with the likes of the Aga Khan, film director Roman Polanski and Playboy boss Hugh Heffner, who were entertained by a young Julio Iglesias! I was therefore more than a little dumbfounded to discover that Marbella Town Hall had no plans to mark the event at all. After the recent outcry about the Mayor’s trip to New York “to encourage tourism”, Mosca would have thought that having some sort of celebration of a jet set marina on your doorstep that millions of tourists have visited over the past 40 years, would have been a no brainer...

Moto Madness

Motorcycle Madness!

It’s the biggest sports event in Spain attracting over 120,000 devotees of all things 2 wheeled to the normally tranquil town of Jerez for a weekend of motorcycle madness,


You really have to question the sanity of whoever came up with the original idea of building a motor racing circuit in Jerez. The place could be described as sleepy at the best of times and until the circuit hosted its first Spanish motorcycle Grand Prix, Jerez was best known for its riding schools and sherry.

All that changed when the motorcycle boys roared into town, closely followed by their cousins in Formula 1. True, the megastars of F1 with their private jets and blackened out motorhomes didn’t return to race after 1997 (The mayor of Jerez, caught up in the excitement of the occasion, and perhaps with just a little too local product inside him, decided to hand out all the prizes at the trophy ceremony, instead of just 3rd like he was supposed to do so. This upset the officials who where waiting behind him and vowed never to come back!), but the heroes of MotoGP loved the place and the fans adored Jerez.

If you’ve never been to a MotoGP in Jerez, a word to the wise. Get up early! There are a few reasons behind this – assuming that you don’t normally spring out of bed with a song in your heart and a gleam in your eye at 6 every Sunday morning. Firstly you want to avoid the Sunday drivers who are either tooteling slowly along the Ruta de Torros, the scenic road up from Algeciras or getting stuck behind a coach of tourists on the way up to Ronda. Nothing is more frustrating than going to watch motorsport where the riders will be racing at over 200kph, while you’re stuck doing 20 behind the Ronda bus.

When you do get up to Jerez, don’t worry about following the signs to the circuit, you’ll be surrounded by bikers - and we’re not talking about hairy arsed Hells Angels here or posers on their Harleys. The guys passing you on either side of the road are sports bikers, wearing brightly coloured racing leathers that wouldn’t look out of place in the paddock. Even the local motorcycle police get into the act, blowing their whistles and waving their arms like demented track marshals.

Once you’ve got into the circuit itself you have a few options available. Buy a baseball cap, T-shirt or flag to declare your allegiance to your favorite rider (Rossi or Lorenzo are safe options) or grab a beer. Rather than the hushed ambience of other sporting events, Jerez is more like a very macho carnival at times. Ladies, if seen at all, tend to be of the pit lane girl that holds the umbrella over the rider while he’s waiting to start the race or the bike bikini bimbo brigade, posing for some PR stunt or other.

Another specialty of the Jerez race is the fireworks. Without doubt, these are the loudest and longest you have ever heard, and it’s a wonder that the US hasn’t targeted Jerez as next in line for weapons of mass destruction. The firecrackers are especially likely to go off at any time from 7am onwards, covering everybody in smoke and accompanied by fino-fuelled cheers.

When the actually business of racing gets underway the first lap is mayhem. It’s a blur of speed and colour as well as smoke and noise (see fireworks above) You, of course will be sitting next to the Rossi fan with the air horn so pack some earplugs, as well as lunch as catering at Jerez is basic. The sheer speed of the motorcycles is awesome. If you’ve seen races on TV, it looks about half the speed when you see and hear them in the flesh, and every corner looks like a controlled crash. Make no mistake; these guys earn their money.

If a Spanish rider wins one of the 3 races (125,250 and 500cc) you’ll be involved in more partying, liquid and, yes, you guessed it, fireworks, than Carnival at Rio. And if the world’s favorite rider, the super talented Italian Valentino Rossi wins, expect unconventional celebrations. One year at Jerez, he stooped on his slowing down lap, got off the bike and made use of the portaloo at the side of the track!

It's always wonderful to get feedback...

There's nothing I like more than the positive feedback from my readers, so I was touched when H at www.typicallyspanish.com asked if he could use my Semana Santa piece on his excellent website.

Alas a day later, he took it down due to comments such as the examples below

"It is no wonder the youth of today are facing so many problems when adults make comments like this. The person who wrote this rubbish article should be removed from the position of writing for Typically Spanish, indeed the article should be removed"

"Señor Editor, please at least set some standards for publishing opinion pieces. Oh, and before you give me the one-two about "it´s just an opinion piece", please remember that even opinion pieces should avoid ostracising and offending people based on where they were born. This is hopefully the last pile of rubbish I will have to read today. Just my OPINION. bah"

"Don't keep demonising the youth in the UK, Mr Editor. Most children get their drinking habits from their parents. You have such a warped view of life."

Chaos, confusion, an angry mob at my door with burning torches?

All in a day's work!

Semanasantics

No other country in Europe, nay, the world does Easter like Spain. Forget trying to celebrated Easter in northern Europe and in the UK you are probably now banned from doing so under Sharia law. For your average northern European child, Easter has no become another, once profoundly religious celebration swamped under a crass commercial tidal wave of naffness. Like Christmas, now called Winterval in some workplaces in the UK so as not to upset Ahmed in accounts, the true meaning of Easter, the most dramatically and powerful period of Christ’s life, representing, incredible pain, suffering, betrayal and the resurrection, not to mention the not inconsiderable matter of the victory of eternal life over death, has been lost due to commercialism. If you asked your average British youth what he though Easter was about, he would probably reply, after finishing his alcopop, that it was something to do with Jesus being put to death by chocolate bunnies, hot cross buns or painted boiled eggs, or combination of the three. Let’s face it, the only musings on life that your everyday council estate scrote is likely to have during Easter is when he finds out that his 13 year old girlfriend is two months pregnant after the St Valentines party…

But I digress, Semana Santa is one of the highlights of the year in Spain, and Andalucia is the place to experience it. Holy Week in Seville is the big one and attracts the most coverage from the television stations, although with Antonio Banderas making his annual pilgrimage to take part in the processions this week, watched on from an upstairs balcony by la Melanie, Malaga runs it a close second. Just in case you’ve landed in Andalucia from Planet Guiri, Semana Santa is basically a week of elaborate processions of intricate floats. The term floats is a little misleading as each way a tonne and are carried throughout town by about 40 men, the costaleros, who are hidden underneath the thing. It’s not a job for the faint hearted and the costaleros wear a headpiece like a large inside out sock, thickly padded around the head and the neck, white T-shirt and dark cotton trousers, a little like a gang of devout and muscular smurfs. Families crowd around the floats when they stop to offer their sons/brothers/cousins encouragement and water
Each float depicts a biblical scene, usually in Christ being whipped, the cat o nine tails beads slapping against each other as they move along. The figures on the floats themselves are normally rendered in what an art critic could describe as “Late Catholic Renaissance Suffering Style”, plenty of detail in the crown of thorns, beads of blood, open wounds and the agonised expression of Christ himself. Happy Clappy Christianity this is not.

And then, of course, there are the Virgins. You can’t have a good procession in Andalucia without a Virgin floating by every so often. While the more cynical amongst you may debate the improbability in locating a Virgin anywhere near the Costa del Sol, in Seville, for example, they take their Virgins very seriously. There is the Virgin del Cachorro (no, I don’t understand why she’s called of the puppy either) as well as the Virgin de la O (so called because the first thing the Virgin said when She gave birth was “O”. Alas, no one could tell me what the second thing was, which makes for a fun Easter time game of Semana Santa Blankety Blank, I can imagine). And then there are the two heavyweight Virgins in Seville, the Ali and Frasier of the float world if you like. The Virgin of Hope of Triana and her great rival the Virgin of Hope of the Macarena, (no, you can’t do the dance when she passes) who, because of the rain a few years ago, where diverted and by chance came face to face with each other in an alley for the first ever time. You can only imagine the conversation that they must have had. “This town is only big enough for one Virgin etc”

The rain plays a big factor during Semana Santa. If it throws it down then, rain will stop play and the news will be full of images of the devoted in tears because they can’t take their Virgin out.

It’s a moving experience and with some of the processions in silence while at others people cry out "guapa! guapa!" or sing to the Virgin Mary. This is not, I repeat NOT the time to try out your bar room Spanish or an impromptu version of Una Paloma Blanca. The locals would set upon you, the streets are crowded and the police and ambulance services would never make it to you on time.


Perhaps the best known image of Semana Santa, however, are the nazarenos, people cloaked in the traditional costume of repentance, which bears more than a passing resemblance to the KKK. As well as this there are also priests swinging incense everywhere, and a band in front of each float that plays music. With more than 50 processions through Seville during Holy Week, it’s a good idea to grab a guide (found at any kiosk or supermarket) to know which procession is where and when, etc. All processions leave from their church, make their way through the city and towards the cathedral, then go back to their church, when the procession ends with the costeleros placing the float down in its place at their church where it won't be touched until the next year.

Of course, if the thought of standing in a crowd is all too much for you, then you can also follow the example of many in Seville and watch the whole thing on television with a bowl of olives and fino to hand. Giralda TV broadcasts live coverage and all the national channels have reports from Seville. Even the chat shows get in on the act, normally discussing what la Melanie, was wearing. And if you’re a real die hard Semana Santa fan, you can even take home DVDs of the proceedings. The sacred week over, Seville slowly gets back to normal and looks forward to the more profane celebrations of the April Feria…



!

Its Crunch Time

Halfway through the 6 Nations and once again it looks like England are no closer to discovering anything like match winning form. But no matter. I just go for the beer. Talking of things rugby, this fantastic photo landed in my inbox from Ruben from Marbella Rugby Club, taken during their victory over Cordoba.

My first thought was "bugger" I really must get a game before the end of the season, quickly followed by "Yeah, but you'll probably end up getting tackled like that"

So looks like my season will consist of draining the beer tent at the Vets International Festival.Again.