The eternal smile of Gunilla von Bismarck (74 years old) has moved. The throneless queen of Marbella has been widowed. Of all the epithets attributable to the woman whose family made the Marbella Club fashionable in 1954, widow is the one she never wanted to yearn for. This Tuesday, Luis Ortizthe love and pillar of his life, has passed away at the age of 80. The causes have not been revealed, but he had been suffering from prostate cancer for years.
Luis and Gunilla met at one of the parties organized in 1971 at the Marbella Cluba must-see destination to spend a few nights on the itinerary of the jet set international. At that time she was 22 years old and he was 21. Their relationship was the result of Cupid’s intervention, since from the first night they felt something very special. Although Luis seemed very bold and uninhibited, the one who really pulled the bait was Gunilla.. It had to serve her well for something that she was the great-granddaughter of the Iron Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, creator of modern Germany.
Despite her youth, Gunilla knew what romantic love was like, as she dated Italian singer Franco Merluzzi and a radio host named Vázquez de Luna, as Manolo Román recalled. Luis and Gunilla’s life seemed like a fairy tale. They lived on different frequencies from those who were still trapped in Franco’s regime.
[Muere Luis Ortiz, exmarido de Gunilla von Bismarck e icono de la ‘jet set’ de Marbella, a los 80 años]
At those parties in Marbella in the 1970s they met the former empress Soraya, who began to divide her life between Paris and the Costa del Sol after the death of her last great love, the Italian director Franco Indovina. Sean Connery and his wife Micheline Roquebrune also came along, who had to keep the former James Bond on a tight leash because he was an inveterate seducer. Also, like Gunilla, he didn’t drink alcohol. His only vice was golf and scaring the paparazzi.
It didn’t matter that Gunilla and Luis did not speak the same language. They understood each other perfectly, as she assured Nieves Herrero: ““Kisses were very important.” The German woman boasted, laughing, that no one was a better kisser than Luis, the black sheep of the eleven children of Francisco Ortiz, the censor who worked for Franco on television from 1942 to 1984. The good man must have been shocked when he saw how his son was going off the rails with the Chorys.that group formed by Yeyo Llagostera, Antonio Arribas and Jorge Morán who livened up the coolest gatherings. “We didn’t hurt anyone. We were some really cool guys,” Luis would confess to the person writing these lines.
After six years of dating, Luis and Gunilla got married in style in Germany. The “I do” took place on October 7, 1978 at the family castle of Friedrichsruh in Hamburg, where 120 guests of great social standing traveled. The most prominent were the kings of Sweden, Carl XVI Gustav (78) and Silvia (80) -the sovereign was a classmate of Gunilla- and Cari Lapique (72) together with Carlos Goyanes, who died a month and a half ago. Without a doubt, A disastrous summer for Marbella. The wedding celebrations lasted three days. They celebrated their honeymoon in South America.. Not in vain, the Bismarcks have kept a huge estate in Brazil, where Gunilla usually spends several months a year away from the circuit of luxury and glamour. The couple came out victorious because, apparently, her relatives did not accept their union too well.
On May 1, 1980, his only son was born in Malaga.Luis, who has always kept away from the partying frenzy of his parents. At his baptism he had an exceptional godmother, Silvia from Sweden. For the couple, the birth of their son was the best achievement of their lives. They have always loved and protected him.
Although it may seem like a lie, The Ortiz-Bismarck marriage They had a big disagreement that could have cost them dearly. However, both played their cards very well. Luis did not like to follow the trail left by the socialites of the moment, so it was Gunilla who divided her season of posturing between Monaco, Crans Montana and Saint Moritz in Switzerland, different parts of Germany and Brazil. The couple could be separated for months without any inconvenience.
Luis’s drunkenness was legendary. He and his buddies used to close the clubs while Gunilla tried to sleep because she was afraid that he would cheat on her. As reported by Vanity Fair“He has sometimes put my suitcases in the hallway after arriving late with a peach. But I have never cheated on him.” The deceased also explained to the aforementioned media that “I would go to the disco, I would get lost… At two in the morning Gunilla would leave, but I stayed. After two o’clock, people who drink get heavy. But the worst of all drugs are gambling and alcohol. Gambling is a disease. The worst there is.”
[Así es la espectacular y lujosa finca de Marbella que Gunilla von Bismarck subasta]
The couple at a UNESCO gala in Dusseldorf.
Gtres
The eighties were a dream. The festivities of Kashoggi They are now part of a collective imagination accessible to only a few. Gunilla always stood out at these events for her beauty, self-confidence and poise. Unforgettable were the encounters with Liz Taylor and George Hamilton, her eternally tanned boyfriend, aboard the Nabila, the luxury yacht of the arms dealer whose name was made of solid gold.
The couple had some crisesbut the biggest one happened in 1989 when, using a checkbook, they confessed exclusively to HELLO! that they were getting divorced. Nobody could believe it. They seemed like the perfect couple. The protagonists assured that they fought a lot and that it was best not to share a roof. When they signed the papers in perfect harmony, Luis and Francisco settled in a house near Gunilla’s.who visited them daily.
Nobody believed the separation because after a year they were photographed again at the best parties in Marbella and they posed in their lavish Villa Sagitario, the 3,000 square metre mansion and 55,000 square metres of land that they owned in Istán, 10 kilometres from Marbella, which was put up for sale at a private auction for 50 million euros in 2017. After the transaction, they opted to live in another much smaller residence with fewer expenses in a small town near Marbella.
In the mid-90s, Gunilla He had a terrible time because the Spanish Treasury demanded many millions of pesetas in taxes from him. since I had discovered that I was spending more than six months in our country. With Luis’ support, getting over that ordeal was a little easier. Little by little, those sumptuous events were fading in their brilliance as a result of the different changes of Government, specifically those of Gil and Julian Muñoz (76). Behind closed doors, the relationship between Gunilla and Luis remained rock-solid and, above all, they were devoted to Francisco.
One of the last images of both together at the 70th anniversary of Marbella Club last April.
Gtres
Another of the great happy moments of his life was when the young man married Elisabet Dutú Mazas, heiress of a great Aragonese fortune, in 2010. The couple has two children who have been Luis’s great passion in the last years of his life. He appeared less and less in public and preferred to stay at home enjoying his children and playing ping-pong with his eternal partner who always beat him up.
