page_title: Marbella
section_title: 20th century
hierarchical_section_title: Marbella / History / 20th century
caption_attribution_description: Fahd bin Abdul Aziz, October 13, 1998
context_page_description: Marbella is a city and municipality in southern Spain, belonging to the province of Málaga in the autonomous community of Andalusia. It is part of the Costa del Sol and is the headquarters of the Association of Municipalities of the region; it is also the head of the judicial district that bears its name.
  Marbella is situated on the Mediterranean Sea, between Málaga and the Strait of Gibraltar, in the foothills of the Sierra Blanca. The municipality covers an area of 117 square kilometres crossed by highways on the coast, which are its main entrances.
  In 2018 the population of the city was 141,463 inhabitants, making it the second most populous municipality in the province of Málaga and the eighth in Andalusia. It is one of the most important tourist cities of the Costa del Sol and throughout most of the year is an international tourist attraction, due mainly to its climate and tourist infrastructure.
  The city also has a significant archaeological heritage, several museums and performance spaces, and a cultural calendar with events ranging from reggae concerts to opera performances.
context_section_description: In the early decades of the century the first hotels were built: El Comercial, which opened in 1918, and the Miramar, in 1926. During the Second Republic, Marbella experienced major social changes and contentious political parties mobilized.
  As the Spanish Civil War began in the late 1930s, Marbella and Casare suffered more anticlerical violence than the rest of western Málaga province.  The day after the failed uprising which led to the civil war, several religious buildings in Marbella were set on fire.  Only the walls of the Church of St. Mary of the Incarnation and the Church of San Pedro Alcantara were left standing.  With the aid of Fascist Italian troops, Nationalist forces seized Marbella during the first months of the war. It became a haven for prominent Nazis, including Léon Degrelle and Wolfgang Jugler, and Falangist personalities like José Antonio Girón de Velasco and José Banús.
  After the Second World War, Marbella was a small jasmine-lined village with only 900 inhabitants. Ricardo Soriano, Marquis of Ivanrey, moved to Marbella and popularised it among his rich and famous friends.  In 1943, he acquired a country estate located between Marbella and San Pedro called El Rodeo, and later built a resort there called Venta y Albergues El Rodeo, beginning the development of tourism in Marbella.
  Soriano's nephew, Prince Alfonso of Hohenlohe-Langenburg, descendant of a high-ranking aristocratic family (his mother, María de la Piedad de Yturbe y Scholtz-Hersmendorff, was the Marquesa de Belvís de las Navas) acquired another estate, Finca Santa Margarita.  In 1954, he opened the Marbella Club, an international resort aimed at movie stars, business executives and the nobility.
  Both resorts came to be frequented by members of European aristocratic families with famous names: Bismarck, Rothschild, Thurn und Taxis, Metternich, de Mora y Aragon, de Salamanca or Thyssen-Bornemisza.  This transformed Marbella into a destination for the international jet set.  Trading on Prince Alfonso's kinship to the royal courts of Europe, his hotel quickly proved popular with vacationing members of Europe's social elites, for its casual but discreet luxury.  Jaime de Mora y Aragón, a Spanish bon vivant and brother to Fabiola, Queen of the Belgians, as well as Adnan Khashoggi, were frequent visitors.  Prince Alfonso's first marriage was to Princess Ira von Fürstenberg, an Agnelli heiress.  Princess Marie-Louise of Prussia (great-granddaughter of Kaiser Wilhelm II) and her husband Count Rudolf "Rudi" von Schönburg–Glauchau eventually worked closely with the new proprietors, the Shamoon family, who took over the Marbella Club Hotel from Prince Alfonso.
  In 1966, Prince Alfonso hired a Beverly Hills architect and, with the assistance of the Banus family, who were personal friends of dictator Francisco Franco and had already developed the later-controversial Valle de los Caídos, developed the high-end tourist resort Puerto Banus.  The resort opened to much fanfare in 1970.  Celebrities in attendance included Franco's designated successor, Juan Carlos (then Prince of Asturias), Prince Rainier of Monaco and his wife Grace Kelly, and Aga Khan IV; entertainers included Julio Iglesias.  In 1973, exiled dictator Fulgencio Batista y Zaldívar, who had left Cuba with a fortune estimated at between $100 and $300 million and lived extravagantly in various Iberian resorts, died of a heart attack there.  Fugitive financier Marc Rich bought a house in Marbella, renounced his American citizenship and claimed Spanish citizenship during his decades of evading American income taxes, although he spent more time in Switzerland, where he died.
  In 1974, Prince Fahd arrived in Marbella from Montecarlo.  Until his death in 2005, Prince Fahd was a frequent and profligate guest.  Marbella welcomed his retinue of over a thousand people spending petro-dollars.  The then-anonymous Osama bin Laden visited on a number of occasions with his family between 1977 and 1988.
  In the 1980s, Marbella continued as a popular jet set destination.  However, the 1987 kidnapping of Melodie
caption: King Fahd of Saudi Arabia. His entourage used to spend up to 5 million euros a day in Marbella.
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