Gecko Towers:
When I first arrived in Spain and started working with clients seeking to relocate or to buy a holiday property in the region we used to often meet at the Hotel El Fuerte. It was charmingly shabby, a little down at heel with livered valets parking cars in a complicated herringbone pattern. The reception desk was paneled as were the rooms around the central light-well to a bar at the rear. The sun terrace was always very popular if a little incongruous. Besuited lawyers and their clients would sit drinking mid-afternoon cooling refreshments while families in swimwear passed too and fro. Grandeur for sure, albeit a little faded but its stunning position high above the sea front at the east end of the Marbella promenade was simply superb.
“El Fuerte Marbella” was built on the site of El Fuerte de San Luis, a fortified castle constructed in the 18th century as part of Philip V’s plan for coastal fortification.
Launched as the Hotel El Fuerte on July 4, 1957, the hotel was updated and expanded somewhat but remained largely unchanged for nearly seventy years. Our image below shows the hotel in the 1960s.
The hotel was the vision of a Seville entrepreneur, with a history in the production of chocolate and olive oil, Don José Luque. He purchased the Marbella land which had been occupied by El Fuerte de San Luis, which was considered highly risky at the time. On 15 July 1957, Don José hosted a gala dinner for 500 invitees to launch his new hotel which then had just 33 rooms. Sadly, Don José died in 1984 and his heirs took over the hotel with plans to renovate it and to expand into an international group of hotels that bears the hotel’s name.
The hotel closed for extensive renovation and reopened in 2023 as the Hotel El Fuerte Marbella. Its comprehensive remodeling delivered the first 5-star hotel of the Fuerte Group.
We had various family members who stayed in the Hotel El Fuerte Marbella this summer, who commented on the fabulous quality of the renovation of this old Marbella icon and, particularly, the variety and ultra high quality of the new restaurants at the hotel.
Here is an excellent review from the UK newspaper, The Independent,
https://www.independent.co.uk/travel/europe/spain/el-fuerte-marbella-hotel-review-b2650833.html
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