The Ensa family created, without imagining it, one of the most luxurious and exclusive places in the world. It was Josep Ensesa Gubert, son of the Girona industrialist Josep Ensesa Pujades, who persuaded his father to buy land on the Costa Brava in exchange for a debt. And so, S’Agaró and the hostel they built there were – and are – the meeting point of the international elite, including the best Hollywood of those years.
Ensesa married and had three children, of which Annathe little one passed away last Sunday at 100 years. With the departure of this passionate woman, who became the sole councilor of the Girona City Council during the Franco regime, a piece of the most mythical history of Catalonia is lost.
Liz Taylor, in La Gavina. (Courtesy)
That piece of land that had no name was located between the bay of Sant Pol and the beach of Sa Conca. The family christened it Agaró, after the stream that flowed through it. The Enesa project to build a garden city overlooking the Mediterranean, it would over time become the most elegant and exclusive corner of the Catalan coast.
Connery, Welles, DeNiro
Famous Hollywood movies like ‘Pandora’ with Ava Gardner, ‘Suddenly, Last Summer’ with Elizabeth Taylor and ‘Mr. Arkadin’, from Orson Welles. Over the years, the hotel has become the meeting place for many movie stars. which has given way to more recent ones such as Sean Connery, Jack Nicholson or Robert de Niro.
S’Agaró, the small enclave on the Costa Brava where celebrities spend their summers
Alex Lazaro
A few years ago, Julia Ensesa, fourth generation, showed us her WhatsApp profile picture: her when she was little with Orson Welles. “At the age of 17 I entered the home library one day and I met Sean Connery -she told us-, I was hallucinating; how beautiful it was.”
The stories that happened under the roof of La Gavina give for several books. And there are, of course. One of them Written by Anna Ensesa: in ‘S’Agaró, el somni de Josep Ensesa’, the recently deceased wrote of the conversion of this wild enclave into a point of reference for luxury and international culture.
We cannot forget some of the historic moments that happened in the hotel. In 1950, Ava Gardner filmed “Pandora”, by Al Lewin, in Tossa de Mar and stayed in La Gavina. Married to Frank Sinatra at the time, she fell in love with bullfighter Mario Cabré. And she consummated her whim. Sinatra flew from Hollywood to Girona to put an end to his wife’s infidelities and upon her arrival he found her in the hostel’s cocktail bar. Between dry martini and dry martinithe brawl became living history: the Voice slapped his wife, an attack that no one can fail to mention when speaking of La Gavina.
DeTaylor and Lady Gaga
Time has passed and that cocktail bar, the Barco bar, continues to exude essences of other times. Help that large solid wood counter, the sheen of the bottles on the mirrored shelves, the leather sofas and rock on the speakers. How useful it is that the Ensesa brothers, owners of La Gavina, tell you stories of golden Hollywood. They do it with surprising naturalness.
Frank Sinatra and Spain, the story of an impossible ‘love’
Jose Madrid
Liz Taylor was also a regular when she was making ‘Suddenly, Last Summer’ in 1959 (Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s adaptation of the Tennessee Williams novel starring Katherine Hepburn and Monty Clift). The diva traveled to the almost deserted Costa Brava with Eddie Fisher, her husband at the time.
From the past to the future, from diva to diva. In 2015, Lady Gaga sang with Tony Bennett at the Cap Roig Gardens Festival, in Calella de Palafrugell, and, of course, stayed in La Gavina. pop diva ordered ten bottles of water of distinctive signs and has not opened a single one. The hotel managers went crazy to find all those original labels that the singer imposed on the service. Not even open them. Those who met her also had a slogan: you can’t look gaga in the eye. Being a diva is not a thing of the past.
90 birthday
In July of this 2022, La Gavina celebrated his 90 birthday with a party that brought together 150 guests. The Ensesa family, owners of the La Taverna del Mar hotel and restaurant, were present, accompanied by the mayor of Castell-Platja d’Aro, Maurici Jiménez, and the president of FC Barcelona, Joan Laporta, as well as other men businessmen, relatives and neighbors of the municipality.
La Gavina, art with a Mediterranean flavour
Miriam Rubio
The descendants of the founder had the task of giving an economic boost to the complex, above all by making other family businesses profitable. The current heirs, Julia, Carina, Josep and Virginia continue to run the hostel as Fourth generation, checking the details, as his family has done since 1932, when it opened. And where in the past it was the Gardners who drank up the whole bar, now other stars are doing the same. Though they prefer to order water instead of dry martinis.
The Ensa family created, without imagining it, one of the most luxurious and exclusive places in the world. It was Josep Ensesa Gubert, son of the Girona industrialist Josep Ensesa Pujades, who persuaded his father to buy land on the Costa Brava in exchange for a debt. And so, S’Agaró and the hostel they built there were – and are – the meeting point of the international elite, including the best Hollywood of those years.
