the (tax) reasons for your divorce

It can’t be a coincidence. Or maybe it is, that in recent weeks three people around 80 years old and with a similar social profile have died. We are talking about Carlos Goyanes, Jimmy Giménez-Arnau and Luis Ortiz. They were also friends, acquaintances and protagonists of the golden age of the jet set in the 80s, whose epicentre was from Madrid to Marbella and vice versa.

Luis Ortiz, 74, was the latest to die from prostate cancer, which he had been suffering from for years. He was a friendly, funny but discreet guy, a playboy who was against office hours, who liked to enjoy the Marbella sun, the golf courses and, years ago, was very close to “Los Choris”, that gang of playboys, in the best sense of the word, which included Yayo Llagostera, convicted for his drug dealings, or Antonio Arribas, the seducer who made Carmen Ordóñez, Mila Ximénez and Lolita Flores fall in love.

Luis Ortiz was like Carlos Goyanes, a native of Madrid and very close to the Franco regime, as the son of a high-ranking official at the Ministry of Information and Tourism, where he worked as a censor to ensure Catholic and traditional morality. His son, on the other hand, was a convinced hedonist, an attractive and likeable man, who fell in love with an imposing German aristocrat in Marbella, Gunilla von Bismarck, great-granddaughter of Kaiser Wilhelm II, unifier of the German nation. They had in common being handsome, modern, showy, living the parties until dawn, dancing, socializing with people of their style, sunbathing, dressing up for Marbella events and not having the slightest interest in working and keeping to a schedule. Gunilla laughed with Luis, who was penniless, as with any German count of his rank. So they got married in October 1978, had a son, Francisco, who was just like his father, and while Gunilla often went to look after his possessions in Germany, Brazil or Monte Carlo, where her mother had a flat and residence, Luis preferred to stay and play golf in Marbella and look after his son, who was a student at a local school.

The couple separated a decade later, in 1989, but they continued living in the same house, attending the same parties together and without a new boyfriend or girlfriend to certify another relationship for either of them. That is why there were suspicions that it was a divorce arranged for the Treasury, to avoid paying taxes. The aristocrat and the playboy, without separation of assets, lived in Spain. He had residence here but not Gunilla.

Gunilla’s mother, Ann-Mari Tengbom, Princess von Bismarck-Schonhausen, who died in 1999, had an enormous fortune, among other things, as the owner of the estate next to the Marbella Club, on the seafront and in the heart of the Golden Mile. A plot of 50,000 square metres of incalculable value, which one day would be inherited by her daughter, for whom the best thing would be to receive that inheritance while divorced and resident outside of Spain.

It was always rumoured in her entourage that after the agreed divorce, Gunilla became a citizen of Monte Carlo, a tax privilege that few can enjoy. And a divorce that also freed Luis Ortiz from paying taxes as the husband of a multimillionaire wife. So their separation was just a piece of paper for economic purposes. Luis Ortiz continued to live in the couple’s Marbella mansion, enjoying his two grandchildren when his son Francisco came to Spain. Gunilla was with him until the end, because they never stopped loving and supporting each other. At her express wish, there will be no traditional wake, nor a funeral chapel. Gunilla is calm: she knew that cancer would end the life of the man of her life, but she did not expect it to be immediate. Now she is mourning with the integrity and serenity of a German aristocrat, where feelings are carried without tears.