The history of Sotogrande starts with the word “destiny” , curious isn't it ?.
One of the conclusions that is most striking is that perhaps we have invented that word to give some kind of explanation to those peculiarities that chance has.
Whatever happens , the fate , destiny or whatever you want to call led to the creation of Sotogrande in 1962 thanks to the marketing director of Swiss Air , who at that time wanted to give flights to some of the company's managers.
It is not surprising those flights were going to Europe, was it destiny?; Here we enter Fredy Melian who at that time worked for “Ayala”(and that later he would be the first director of Sotogrande) and of course , where did it end up? Yes, we are right , it ended up in the south of Spain.
Every vacation has its bad side, no matters how positive we are , so the bad things about Mr. Melian´s vacations ended before they started, because his boss asked him to find some land to buy with some requirements.
Finally, the boss of our dear Mr. Melian , Mr. Mc Making , took the decision to buy the paniagua land.
Most importantly , who or what was it that gave the push for the star of Sotogrande?
Well, it was the construction of the golf course , for which Robert Trent Jones was hired.
Little by little Sotogrande grew;A small hotel was built that was then called “Hotel Sotogrande Tennis Club” at present called “Hotel tennis” and in turn the famous and well known beach club “El Cucurucho” was built.
In a short time the area became a small community and then, thanks to George Moore , the International College was built.
When the coming and going of selling and building houses has settled down a bit ,Enrique Zobel brought polo , creating the first polo field on the beach, this being one of the most beautiful in the world , which a few years later had to be demolished to build new apartments .
With the passing of time they had to open Sotogrande to other potential buyers, this caused disturbance , so the current bridge that connects the beach areas and the port of Sotogrande was built, the first apartments were built at the mouth of the Guadiaro river , which a little later would be known as the Marina.
During these years , Jaime Ortiz Patiño gave Sotogrande the celebration of the well known “Volvo-masters” competition at the Valderrama golf club, that this gives much to talk about the beautiful urbanization and as a result it has a considerable performance and popularity.
And so, little by little , Sotogrande was taking the form it has today, as we know it.
What do you think , was it destiny?