Staff Reporter
By Dilip Kuner and Jon Clarke
THERE is nowhere in Spain like Sotogrande in summertime.
The country’s most exclusive private enclave, this is the go-to destination for the discreetly wealthy and famous.
Even the privileged tourists who come to visit from Marbella or Ibiza, say, are surprised at the difference.
“The golf courses are excellent, the marina is safe and uncongested, there are no piles of traffic and people are generally nice,” explains local businessman Ben Bateman, who has spent his life in the resort.
“It has changed so much in Sotogrande over the last two decades and all for the good,” he continues. “Above all, there is so much more to do here now in terms of eating and going out and you don’t have to worry about your teenagers at night.”
He’s referring to a string of cool spots, including Agora, Trocadero and the After Polo where hundreds of youngsters gather through the warm summer evenings.
Yes, you read that correctly, ‘After Polo’… it’s where your youngsters will be rubbing shoulders with Middle Eastern princes, Made in Chelsea princesses and, of course, Argentinian polo professionals. What is there not to like?
With its unbeatable location and near-perfect weather, it’s no wonder this paradise is one of Spain’s most sought-after spots to live.
Lying just 100km west of Malaga, it offers a front-row seat to the ancient world’s ‘Pillars of Hercules’ – that’s the Rock of Gibraltar and Morocco’s Jebel Musa.
It’s where business moguls and A-listers head to relax and enjoy the fruits of their wealth. From yachts and private jets to golf and polo, everyone here seems to be living a lifestyle few could dream of.
But how did this once sleepy farm turn into a playground for the elite?
The mastermind behind the transformation was one Joseph McMicking, an American-Filipino business tycoon.
McMicking had already made his mark as president of the Ayala Corporation, where he brought the prestigious Forbes Park to life in the Philippines.
Inspired by the success of his previous venture, he set his sights on replicating that exclusivity on the sunny Spanish coast and in 1962, sent his cousin, Alfredo ‘Fredy’ Melian, on a mission to find the perfect plot.
Armed with little more than a motorbike and a sense of adventure, Melian scoured the region’s then rugged dirt roads.
His efforts paid off when he discovered a sprawling 1,800-hectare estate near Gibraltar.
The farmland had been owned by a succession of the rich and famous – the Duke of Arcos, the Larios gin family and Spain’s then-richest man, Juan March, arms and tobacco dealer and founder of the eponymous science and arts institution.
It seemed fated for grander use – and it ticked the boxes.
“We bought the land at Sotogrande without having seen it, like a pig in a poke,” said McMicking. “Paid $750,000 down and had to pay another third in six months and the rest in a year.”
He arrived with his nephews, Jaime and Enrique Zobel (the latter had been overseeing his pal, the Sultan of Brunei’s 1,788-room palace) and Melian stayed on as ‘director of works’.
The Antigua Venta Toledo served as the first headquarters and, from there, the team somehow muddled along through.
Inspired by Palm Beach and Pebble Beach in the US, McMicking was determined to build the community around a golf club and, in 1963, he hired top course designer, Robert Trent Jones.
The Real Club Sotogrande was his first European venture and the first course in Europe with a new-fangled automated irrigation system.
Spain’s top modernist architect, Luis Gutierrez Soto (of Madrid’s famous Callao Theatre and the fnac building), designed the low-slung clubhouse, which is still very avant-garde today.
Next up the team hired the director of The Ritz hotel in Madrid to run the club.
And Trent Jones would return a decade later to design Valderrama, the setting for Volvo Masters events, the Spanish Open and even the Ryder Cup.
Ultimately it put the Costa del Sol (ED: technically just outside – it’s Cadiz) on the map as one of Europe’s top golfing destinations.
Meanwhile, keen polo player, Enrique Zobel built a polo ground by the beach.
La Playa, inaugurated in 1965, wasn’t Spain’s first (the Jerez Polo Club dates back to 1872), but it very much set the social tone.
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Today, the newer Santa Maria Polo Club is considered one of the best in the world.
The first beach club the Cucurucho (named after its conical-shaped cornet roof) still exists today, though it’s bigger and grander, and called Trocadero.
The first hotel, the modernist, luxury motel style Tennis Hotel, now the Hotel Encinar, emerged in 1965.
Word spread and the rich, powerful and discreet began moving in. Jaime Ortiz-Patiño of the Bolivian tin mining dynasty, diamond magnate Philip Oppenheimer, Javier Benjumea, the Marquis of Puebla de Cazalla, was one of the few Spanish residents.
A series of French dukes, Belgian barons, scions of European business followed, and later politicians (including Tony Blair and Fabian Picardo), and a smattering of celebrities including former England manager Glenn Hoddle, racing driver Eddie Jordan and golfer Tony Jacklin followed.
Many of the original houses are genuine architectural gems. The former Domecq family mansion is now the clubhouse of the San Roque golf course, but unless you are a houseguest you are unlikely to see the best of the rest.
American diplomat Nicholas Biddle’s house, built by Javier Carvajal fresh from designing the Spanish Pavilion at the New York 1963 World’s Fair, cost $160,000.
Sadly, prices have gone up: When Joseph Kanoui, head of the syndicate that bought Cartier, put his Casa La Manzana on the market for €26m in 2006, it was the most expensive house for sale in Spain.
McMicking’s plans for Sotogrande extended to the kind of person who came and what they built. “A Sotogrande based on money would be the most horrible society imaginable,” he said. However, it was only when Sotogrande was running out of cash and needed to open up to a new market of buyers that more affordable housing was developed.
Franco had helped the Sotogrande shareholders by waiving the rule that prevented foreigners purchasing land in Spain. But he stuffed them by closing Spain’s border with Gibraltar in 1969. With the N-340 under construction, the trek to Malaga airport was arduous. The jet set couldn’t jet in, and Sotogrande fell into debt.
In the late 70s, the decision was taken to build apartments on the left bank of the Guardiaro. In 1978, to appeal to all-year residents, the International School at Sotogrande (ISS) was set up – initially in the old cattle sheds of one of the farms, Cortijo de Paniagua.
By the time the border reopened in 1985, Sotogrande was a different kind of place, still off the beaten track – it would be another 17 years until the AP-7 motorway hooked it up, but more connected to the real world. Some of the residents even had day jobs!
McMicking’s vision had always included a marina with canals and islands of apartments with yacht views, and the 1980s developments included just that, in shape of the Puerto Deportivo Sotogrande, completed in 1987, three years before his death.
The construction of this mini-Venice was as good as saying times might change, but the dream of Sotogrande as a beautiful playground, a gorgeous sanctuary, remains intact. As he predicted: “Sooner or later the Costa del Sol is going to be mobbed but Sotogrande will be an island of order in the chaos.”
No truer could he have been.
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