Marbella of the 1970’s: Our First Years
The Shamoons, Chris & his first wife Kirsten, & the Corners in 1977
businessmen and dignitaries from every single country in the Middle East bought properties in Marbella, adding to our wonderful cosmopolitan and cultural mix. Notable among these were Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, the Ruler of Abu Dhabi and President of the UAE, whose family still owns a magnificent estate adjacent to Rocío de Nagüeles; various relatives of the Marzook family from Kuwait; Adnan Kashoggi and his many friends; the electronics magnate Mouffac Al Midani; Rafic Harriri, who went on to become the Prime Minister of Lebanon; Akram Ojjeh, Sheikh Kamal Adham and countless others. The very special comfort that many Middle Easterners felt and feel in Marbella and southern Spain in general is more easily understood in light of the history of Al-Andalus. Al-Andalus was the Moorish name for the parts of Spain (+34) 952 863 750 | www.panorama.es
and Portugal occupied by their people for an incredible 781 years, from 711 until they were expelled by Ferdinand and Isabel in 1492. Many rivers, villages and other geographical areas bear Arabic names. There are thousands of words in the Spanish dictionary stemming directly from the Arabic language. There is Moorish blood in the veins of most Andalusian people. The Rif mountains of Morocco are visible most days of the year, with the lights of Tangiers visible many nights, past the Rock of Gibraltar, giving one a very special sense of our geography.
We sold a great number of properties to the Saudi Royal Family and other Middle Easterners
A British enclave In the early 70’s, a small number of British citizens, not more than two or three thousand, had settled on the Costa del Sol either as part-time or full-time residents, many of them important personalities. There was a specific reason for this, as Great Britain had exchange controls in the form of the infamous “dollar premium”: tight restrictions on spending money made it very difficult for people to take foreign holidays and to buy second homes overseas on a scale we now take for granted, or to buy shares in foreign companies. At one point, people could not take more than £50 cash abroad, even for an ordinary family holiday overseas. You even needed to have your passport stamped by the bank when you collected the cash! The result was of course an enormous bottled-up demand for U.K. residents to purchase homes abroad. 23