In the early Seventies, the rich flocked to the Costa del Sol for their summer holidays. To report on the destination du jour, the New Statesman sent the 19-year-old journalist Tina Brown – who would go on to edit Vanity Fair and the New Yorker – to southern Spain.
I found the security tighter than ever this year. Gone are the days when a brush salesman with a heavy tan and a card signed “Lord Snowdon” could be assured of a cordial reception at the door. Sly interlopers, trying to gatecrash by swimming in from boats are quickly weeded out by Count Rudi, the lantern-jawed manager, who polices the swimming pool; while at thrilling intervals the club owner, Prince Alfonso, a suave bumble bee in yellow and black boxer trunks, descends to make a fighting check that all goes superbly well in his kingdom by the sea.
Yet, at 3.15 in the afternoon, I find the Club strangely deserted. The Count, astride the wall dividing the pool area from the beach, casts dolorous eyes over the restaurant, empty except for an American couple.
“D’ya think this is where the action is?” the husband wonders fretfully. “Well, if it’s not,” replies his wife with a grim smile, “we’re going to try every goddammed beach club until we find it.’
The Count swigs uneasily at his Bullshot – this year’s drink – a revitalising mixture of vodka and consommé. He knows where the action is all right – 30 yards from the beach at a straw hut owned by an American actor, who, flushed with success from his latest spaghetti Western, has taken to running a restaurant in his spare time.
Rudi has done everything in his power to counteract this disaster – opened a new Tahitian-style bistro, employed Gypsies to serenade each table, even offered a 35-peseta reduction if you choose two dishes from Group Three. But it’s no use. He can’t beat the trend.
3.37 p.m. A flurry of sand; a scream of brakes. The beach buggy has returned with its bloated burden of wine-sodden sophisticates. Out leaps a geriatric swinger in a chic edition of a kiss-me-quick hat. “Darlink!” he cries flirtatiously, “I tried to call you all morning, but there was no reply.” His girl-friend, a Danish model with well-bruised thighs, sinks down on a sun bed, fatigued by her 30 yards’ safari from the restaurant.
“I hope you enjoyed your lunch,” calls Rudi, insincerely, then, vicious in his disappointment, “Feet in the footbath, if you don’t mind, Fräulein.”
“Beautiful as ever!” croons a skeletal Contessa, en route to the changing room. No one could accuse her of being jealous. “My dear,” she murmurs, sotto voce to her friend, “have you seen the Danish Open Sandwich is with us again?”
With the post-prandial lassitude, the backgammon starts. “Know somethin”, Gerry?’ says one Campari communist as he meditates his next throw. “Half the world is starving and no one gives a damn.” “Yeah,” says Gerry. “I’m not surprised. It took me four hours at lunchtime to get an ensalada mixto. The service in that place stinks.”
Only Action Man, who ate his lunch 45 minutes too soon is fretting for more excitement. The Gypsies have dispersed and beat music throbs provocatively from under the thatched sugar-loaf that houses the bar. He decides resentfully that if the rest of the Marbella Club is in a cataleptic stupor, he at least will do his own thing. His shoulders start moving and before long he is lurching round and round in his corner of the bar like an Aunt Sally in a shooting gallery.
For the cognoscenti, however, serious sunbathing is under way. Props are peeled off ready for the 60 minutes of seering exposure. The Contessa emerges from the changing room, shining with sun oil, a strip of silver foil clipped over her thin aristocratic nose. Her friend, a platinum blonde, carefully crams her hair under a printed Dalilah Lema’s hat. “It’s a pleasant little villa,” her voice wafts across the beach. “Just the one pool, minstrels’ gallery, pitch-and-putt course; but Conway won’t be here much and the children seem happy.”
“How was the comic bullfight?”
“Terrible, darling. They were all dwarfs.” (The bulls? the matadors? the audience?)
The swimming pool now regains its tyranny. Out of it, strenuously flexing his stomach muscles, rears Giorgio – once the Baby Pignatari of the Costa del Sol, now heavily into the male menopause.
“Since I’ve been living on brown rice I have never felt more like a million dollars,” he confides, blowing his nose and tossing back another Sanatogen and soda. He nods courteously at the Geriatric Swinger who chunters past in search of a telephone, the Open Sandwich gambolling playfully in his wake. “Stavros is the best argument for euthanasia there is,” he volunteers sourly.
This is Rudi’s favourite time of day. For 10 minutes he can relax before the evening count-down, and by way of doing so he conducts an argument in graphic semaphore with a friend half a mile out to sea in a speedboat. The Contessa sits up and checks the time. Surreptitiously she begins to hurl her belongings into a capacious Gucci hold-all and steals towards the steps. Too late! She has been noticed by the barman who throws off his white jacket and looks in disgust at Action Man who has just ordered another whisky sour. Surely the fool realises that unless he leaves now he will never have time to change and be recycled into the Saldubra at 18.00 hours, the Port at 19.35, the Menchu at 20.42, La Fonda at 22.38, Don Leoni’s at 23.15 and the Mau Mau at 02.00?
In the drive, the pace is hectic. We join the frenzied convoy of hooting trendies. Bringing up the rear in last year’s car (a canary yellow Mini-Moke) are Action Man and his wife, their faces haggard with strain.
“What do I do?” says my friend, putting me out of my misery at once as we purr between the oleanders. ‘Darlink, I am in shipping.’
We have reached the end of the drive, and since traffic lights are démodé this summer it is our turn to shoot out onto the Wall of Death. Out in the main traffic stream we are overtaken by a reproduction Bugatti honking furiously. At the wheel is Giorgio, a smile of triumph on his face. By his side – the Danish Open Sandwich!
The Geriatric Swinger plays it cool. He places a hand on my knee. “Darlink,” he says, his face lighting up in a cardiac grimace. “Vy not take a risk and have dinner with me tonight?”
My eyes stray past his shoulders to the other side of the road. Upside down on the verge is a crashed Mercedes. Across the disintegrating body someone has stuck a poster – “Fiesta!”.
[Further reading: From the archive: Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s measure of constraint]
Content from our partners
Related
This article appears in the 20 Aug 2026 issue of the New Statesman, Summer Special
Join the debate
Subscribe here to commentWonderful stuff. She appeared in “Call my Bluff” on BBC4 last week. Like being in the 1960’s again.