The Glitz and the Not So Glitz

After a matter of months, I discovered that one of the most common misconceptions regarding the Mediterranean town of Marbella, was its reputation for glitz and glamour – the corner in which I found myself living boasting very little that could be attributed to the high life.

Many of the apartment buildings were shabby, my new friends and neighbours simple people with normal jobs – many of which involved a daily commute to the nearby city of Málaga – normal apartments, normal cars and normal lives.

The nearby restaurants were unexceptional (in all but the delicious fare they produced) and reasonably priced, the bars counted mainly Spanish speakers amongst their clientele and catered for them accordingly; with affordable drinks and music with a strong Hispanic flavour.

Things hotted up slightly along the seashore, but without ever really fulfilling the promise associated with their geographical location.

No, the real glitz and glamour was to be had a couple of kilometres further down the coast in that rich man’s playground, Puerto Banús.

Built thirty years previously in 1970 by local developer, José Banús, it was still administratively within the municipality of Marbella but without being ‘Marbella proper’, and was designed to be an unmistakable cut above: attractive, low-rise buildings curving round a beautiful marina filled with ostentatious plastic tubs, sorry, I mean filled with pricey motor yachts of all shapes and sizes.

Expensive restaurants overflowing with the requisite slim, perma-tanned, haute-couture bedecked diners with their facial expressions of botox-induced vacuity, again, sorry, I of course meant with their sophisticated demeanour, lined the Marina –  la crème de la crème of modern celebrity youth and not-so-youthful, trying to outdo each other with scintillating tales of drug-taking and Bollinger-quaffing at the local haunts.

“I got absolutely off my face on a magnum of Cristal in Dreamers last night, and had to be carried out by one of the bouncers.”

“Oh pur-leeez, that is so last year. I snorted fourteen lines of coke in the bogs at Olivia Valere, puked all over some z-list celebrity’s Manolos and got arrested for flashing my tits.”

After a sumptuous seafood supper at 20,000 pesetas a head, and whilst whiling away the hours before the nightclubs got their fashionably late buzz on, there was always the large selection of über-trendy bars to choose from – spaces bedecked with snowy white cushions and marshmallowy upholstered sofas or chaise-longues over which to drape oneself winsomely in the hope of attracting a bloke with enough money to finance the night’s substance-induced exploits.

Am I coming over a little waspishly?

It could well be down to the  fact that, never having been a girl who could give a hoot about fashion (with neither the figure nor the wallet to counteract this innate lack of interest), jet-setting, physical appearance or the lives of the self-proclaimed elite, I absolutely loathed the place and was not much more kindly disposed to the people it attracted either.

Maybe I was jealous on a subconscious level of all those seemingly effortlessly beautiful, wealthy people and their apparently sparkly lives.

Perhaps walking those streets brought me uncomfortably in touch with the cloak of invisibility that can blight the life of the rather plain… who knows.

But whatever the reason, there was never a risk of Puerto Banús becoming my cup of tea; and other than flying visits to the only department store in the area, El Corte Inglés, or a jaunt to the cinema, I avoided it wherever possible.

Of course one of the main culprits for the allegations of glitz constantly levelled at Marbella, was the late King Fahd of Saudi Arabia.

The monarch arrived in Marbella in 1974 and proceeded to oversee the construction of the Marmar Palace, modelled on the White House. His habit became to visit on alternate summers; throwing the area into uproar with the arrival of his vast retinue in private jets – including a Boeing 747 – complete with Mercedes-Benz limousines and other luxury cars that would roar up and down the coast roads all summer; careless young princes at the wheel.

At the beginning of those rich summers, queues of people looking for seasonal work would line up outside the palace, all hoping for an opportunity to improve their lot with the help of this rather unusual and generous visitor. Not only did he give generously to his staff, but he was also a benefactor of the local hospital and many housing projects in and around Marbella.

King Fahd’s death in 2005 left the region reeling – it has been estimated by some that he could well have contributed up to $10million for each day he spent there – and the Marmar Palace abandoned, since falling into genteel disrepair.

Another of the Saudi Arabian royal family’s gifts to the Marbella, this time with the local Muslim population in mind, was the King Abdul-Aziz Mosque: a beautiful building and most notably the first mosque to be constructed on Spanish territory since the Reconquest by the Catholic Kings five centuries before.

Muslim or not, it was more than worth a visit on a balmy summer evening when the muezzin was calling the faithful to worship.