Places 26 The Principe
Places 26 The Principe Alfonso lounge at the Marbella Club’s Bel Air Villa On Location Marbella’s Still Got It A place where royals and the glitterati have rubbed elbows for 70 years, the sunny Andalusian beach town is more magnetic than ever, pairing contemporary sophistication with nostalgic glam. By Ann Abel PHOTO © MARBELLA CLUB CENTURION-MAGAZINE.COM
27 T hese articles that say Marbella is some great new destination are a bit funny to those of us who have been coming here since the 1970s,” says Daniel Shamoon, who spent his childhood summers in the fishing villageturned-jet-set hideaway. He is now the managing director of Luxury Hotel Partners, whose projects include the properties that put Marbella on the glamour map – the Marbella Club ( marbellaclub.com) and Puente Romano Beach Resort (puenteromano.com) – as well as the Small Luxury Hotels brand. At the same time, the city has certainly been “rediscovered” in the past few years, he notes, especially since global citizens arrived during that massive pandemic-era relocation. “There’s a sense of a secret that has become public,” muses Shamoon. “Marbella has come back in a big way.” A growing community of year-round international residents is combining with constantly improving hotels to establish Marbella more firmly than ever as one of the world’s premier destinations: it’s a place with a main drag known as the Golden Mile, a marina for superyachts, celebrity-flecked new members’ clubs and real-estate developments like La Zagaleta (lazagaleta. com). Newly announced direct flights to nearby Málaga from New York and various Middle Eastern capitals are set to seal the deal. Like many people in Marbella, Shamoon points to the fantastic weather – its microclimate and location between a mountain peak and the sea make it more temperate than Málaga – Andalusian authenticity, natural beauty and colourful characters as well as name-brand dining, nightlife, sports and shopping offerings. There’s also the backstory of the place, which has always maintained something of its lustre, even during its decades of supposed decline. (On that score, says Jorge Manzur, the general manager of the Anantara Villa Padierna Palace Benahavis ( anantara.com) and a Marbella resident since 1997, it was the Spanish media that tried to destroy the city’s glamorous image. And they failed, because “the brand is too strong internationally”. And he should know about brand-building, because his hotel, which hosted Michelle Obama in 2010 before falling off the radar, is firmly back on it, being picked up by Leading Hotels of the World, American Express’s Fine Hotels + Resorts and Virtuoso.) Today’s Marbella began in the 1950s, when Prince Alfonso of Hohenlohe-Langenburg’s Rolls-Royce broke down and he got stuck there. There were worse places to be, he reasoned, and invited friends to join him. Soon enough, celebrities, royals and billionaires PHOTOS FROM LEFT: © PUENTE ROMANO, © ANANTARA From left: the Roman-style pool at Anantara Villa Padierna Palace Benahavis; dining at Puente Romano’s Sea Grill restaurant
