Earlier in 2024, in mid-May, was the 20th anniversary of Marbella’s – and Spain’s – most storied and infamous politician, Jesús Gil. He was known as Spain’s most corrupt mayor, but he was much more than that and it’s worth telling his oft-told tale again.
Infamous though he may have been, he still has his supporters. During his tenure he won three back-to-back, absolute majorities on Marbella’s city council via his private political party the Grupo Independiente Liberal (GIL)
It didn’t matter that he was up on corruption charges for two of those elections. The people kept voting for him. He was finally removed from office because of corruption charges related to embezzling 20 million Euros for Atlético Madrid.
At the time he had been the president of the football club 15 years. That money from Marbella’s taxpayers made its way into his private bank account and from there to various and sundry associates.
But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. It’s worth going back to the beginning.
Gil grew up in a humble household under the Franco dictatorship. He went to university to study Economics but dropped out and became a car parts salesman. However, his sights were always set to higher horizons.
By the age of 36, in 1969 he had become a property developer. In that year, a project that he spearheaded in Segovia collapsed on a restaurant full of diners. Fifty-eight people were killed and another 150 were seriously injured. Gil himself had been in the restaurant with a client but had left moments before the collapse.
There was an investigation,and he landed in jail with a five-year prison sentence. Investigators uncovered that Gil’s project had not only opened before the concrete was dry. It also had no architect, no surveyors and no detailed plans at all.
After just 18 months of his sentence served (and 400 million pesetas paid to victims), General Franco pardoned Gil. In 1984, he moved to Marbella and picked up again as a property developer, building a strong business and gaining a following and notoriety for his colourful language (ie. use of obscenities and insults) and brash, determined ways.
In 1987 he won the presidency of the Atlético Madrid football club, after recruiting a top player, Paolo Futre. During his tenure the club went through 39 managers. The club also won several championships.But Gil, as always, was a magnet for publicity as he made shocking statements to the press.
After the team was defeated once, he told the media that he hoped the whole team died in a plane crash on the way home. When Madrid played Amsterdam, he made horrible, racist comments about the African players on the Amsterdam team. Another time, when Madrid lost, he said it was because the referee was gay and a pedophile. He also punched the manager of the other Madrid team, Real Madrid, in the face during an argument.
Ironically, this national profile probably helped his political career and in 1991 he won the mayorship of Marbella and his first absolute majority on council. The combination of these two positions would ultimately be his downfall but for a decade he was at the peak of his power.
There’s no doubt that Gil had a “vision” for Marbella, in particular as a playground for the rich and a haven for wealthy but, shall we say, “problematic” individuals. While the city boomed and grew, it also became known for attracting mobsters and even notorious Nazis. An estimated €600 million in mob money was laundered through the city during his tenure.
But the example of Marbella’s growing wealth led to more success for his GIL party. It extended to other towns along the Costa del Sol and his son became mayor of neighbouring Estepona, which wanted to repeat the magic of Gil’s Marbella.
His popularity with ordinary people also likely came from his success in reducing street crime as well as his ability to inspire growth and jobs. He also spearheaded the renewal of downtown Marbella and the plan to have all the houses painted white and blue.
As to the street crime, the methods were reminiscent of the dictatorship in terms of being heavy-handed. Delinquents and prostitutes were beaten, although Gil once famously said “for delinquents the stick, for prostitutes the door.” Homeless people were paid or literally driven out of town.
Gil himself was famous for yelling abuse and obscenities at the homeless and at prostitutes on the street. He also yelled abuse at his opponents, calling a local PSOE councillor a “whore” when he referred to her in city council meetings. He called a female journalist a “prostitute for the press.”
He was not someone who hid his views, that was for certain. That even included placing a statue of the Spanish dictator Francisco Franco in the lobby of Marbella city hall.
But, while street crime was dealt with harshly, Gil’s brand of crime flourished. The people that he put in place and patronized took advantage of his attitude of self-enrichment and urban development by bribery.
His head of urban planning, Juan Antonio Roca amassed a fortune worth over €200 million with a trove of 71 ghost companies used to launder money. He had a ranch with over 100 thoroughbred horses and numerous properties. Roca, formerly an unemployed builder, may have done better financially than Gil himself.
While Gil was mayor there were between 18,000-30,000 properties built illegally in the city. Many of them were approved based on envelopes of cash. Gil tried to formalize his “model” of urban development by instituting a new planning law in 1998. That planning law was passed literally in the middle of the night to avoid scrutiny.
Many of those properties were built on top of land that was designated for schools, parks, a bus station, and a health centre. If you’re wondering why Marbella doesn’t have enough public spaces, you can find part of the problem in this epoch.
Ultimately, Gil’s planning law was tossed in the trash and Marbella went back to the 1986 PGOU (planning law) – a situation that is still not resolved. A big part of the challenge is how to deal with all these illegal buildings. People live in these buildings and people live in the shadow of those buildings that harmed their quality of life and shouldn’t have been built.
There was an attempt to regularize almost all the illegal buildings with a new planning law in 2010 but that was thrown out in 2015 by the Spanish Supreme Court, Marbella again reverted to the 1986 law. The buildings were once again illegal, and the original complainants were again in limbo. Planning permits have also been practically paralyzed by delays since then, ironically delaying even further legal development.
Gil was ultimately forced to resign as mayor because of the siphoning of public cash to the Madrid sports club in what became known as the “case of the shirts”. He was barred from holding any public office for a period of 28 years. Given that he was 69 years old at the time of the sentence, it was obviously for the rest of his life.
Once Gil was gone as the person holding the whole thing together, the bigger unraveling began. In 2003, a fight within the GIL party led to a late-night coup at city hall between his chosen successor and another GIL leader. The GIL soon fell apart as the noose tightened.
A major investigation was launched in spring 2006, known as Operation Malaya and Operation Malaya 2. Both of those investigations led to the mayor and vice-mayor of Marbella being tossed in jail for corruption, along with Roca.
The second investigation led to 30 councillors and former councillors being investigated for corruption. One of those jailed was the PSOE councillor abused by Gil. She left her own party to become vice-mayor as part of the 2003 coup against Gil’s successor, apparently to get a piece of the action.
In the end, the Spanish government stepped in and dissolved the council, placing a committee of experts in charge and appointing an interim council based on the percentages received by the major parties in the previous election. The GIL by then had torn itself apart as those who ran it tried to avoid their inevitable fate and fell out with one another.
Gil himself died on his ranch in 2004 of natural causes, at the age of 71. He still had several trials pending and almost certainly would have been embroiled in Operation Malaya, had he survived. In the end, the city was basically left bankrupt while also having neglected paying the social security and tax payments of its employees. Its debt was over €200 million.
Every story has a moral, but this one isn’t clear. On the one hand, Gil was a man who failed upwards in spectacular fashion. Marbella is still trying to disentangle itself from his legacy almost a generation later.
On the other hand, he was widely loved right up until the end, with nearly 20,000 people attending his funeral. He was seen as the impetus behind the revitalization and international reputation of Marbella that continues to this day.
No doubt that was why, until the GIL exploded, they still could win elections. Even after Gil himself was forced from office. People were willing to turn a blind eye to the corruption because it brought jobs and clean streets. Perhaps, if there’s anything to take from this story it’s that people can have complicated legacies. And that even monsters can garner support when they are the only option people see for solving problems.
View full article in Terra Meridiana