Barack Obama and the Spanish Connection
The year was 1988 and 26-year-old Barack Obama was travelling from London to Kenya. As he later recounted in his “Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance” memoir, published in 1995, he switched off the overhead light and closed his eyes, “letting my mind drift back to an African I’d met while travelling through Spain, another man on the run”.
Obama had been waiting for a night bus in a roadside tavern between Madrid and Barcelona, when a man appeared out of nowhere and asked if he could buy him some coffee – he was from Senegal and was crisscrossing Spain for seasonal work.
“Shortly before dawn, we were deposited in front of an old bus depot, and my friend gestured me over to a short, thick palm that grew beside the road. From his knapsack he pulled out a toothbrush, a comb and a bottle of water that he handed to me with great ceremony. And together we washed ourselves under the morning mist, before hoisting our bags over our shoulders and heading toward town.
“As we walked toward the Ramblas, I had felt as if I knew him as well as any man; that, coming from opposite ends of the earth, we were somehow making the same journey. When we finally parted company… one part of me (was) wishing then that I could go with him into a life of open roads and other blue mornings; another part realising that such a wish was also a romance, an idea, as partial as my… image of Africa.”
Nearly three decades later, with Obama by then well settled in the White House and no doubt thankful he had not opted for a rambling life on Europe’s highways and byways, his wife Michelle and younger daughter Sasha followed a rather different route to Spain, arriving at Málaga airport in a military aircraft (“Air Force Two“) with a huge entourage and security detail.
Instead of a rickety old bus, they drove off in a convoy of 15 vehicles, as police cordoned off the traffic, and an hour later they arrived at the Villa Padierna hotel in Benahavís municipality (between Marbella and Estepona).
The Obamas visited La Alhambra in Granada on their second day in Spain and the hotel’s beach club the next day, Sasha also spent the afternoon at the Selwo Aventura safari park in Estepona, and they all travelled up to Ronda on the Saturday.
Having asked for “normality” (pretty relative in this case, in spite of their best intentions), Michelle Obama politely declined an invitation to attend the inaugural Starlite Gala, held at the Villa Padierna and co-hosted by Antonio Banderas and Eva Longoria, on their last night on the Coast, and instead dined at an ultra-select restaurant on Marbella’s Golden Mile.
Now, as his presidency draws to a close, Barack Obama himself will be back in Spain and also travelling to Andalucía, although in this case only to Sevilla unless he makes a spontaneous last-minute plan to detour to the Costa del Sol and perturb his security contingent’s best-laid plans.
As someone who has travelled the world, both incognito with a rucksack and in the global spotlight behind bullet-proof glass, Obama would certainly appreciate the classic charm and cosmopolitan attractions of southern coastal Spain; all of which, by the way, will be on magnificent display this weekend as Marbella celebrates the last two days of its vibrant annual fair.
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(Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)[/caption]
Who knows, maybe he, Michelle and their two daughters will be able to return for a more leisurely visit in the future. Perhaps even buy a European holiday home… and we have the perfect option in Guadalmina Baja, where another former national leader, José María Aznar, and his wife Ana Botella, own a villa. Spacious, absolutely private, hidden behind 100 palm trees, close to golf, with staff quarters for the Secret Service and a Balinese-style chill-out area and fitness facilities, the mansion featured here is priced at $9,500,000 – the equivalent of just a few lucrative post-presidential corporate speeches.
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