NOBODY F**KS WITH THE JESÚS [Part 2]

Fire up the time machine and set the dial to November 23rd, 1996. Specifically, the 32nd minute of the premier league encounter between Southampton and Leeds United at The Dell. Picture the scene, midfield virtuoso Matthew Le Tissier has just gone off injured. Enter Ali Dia (real name Aly Dia), Senegalese international, former PSG player, and cousin of George Weah, wearing the number 33 shirt. He’s making his debut today but nobody has heard of him—is he any good? Why, former World Player of the Year (and future president of Liberia) George Weah vouched for him personally, even telephoning Southampton manager (and future Sky Sports pundit/casual xenophobe) Graeme Souness. He must be half decent. By the 85th minute, Dia’s debut was cut short, ignominiously being subbed off, and the Southampton faithful had their answer. Though he had been on the pitch for only 53 minutes, two things were clear by that point. 1) if Ali Dia did share DNA with George Weah, he certainly shared none of his talent. Le Tissier would later describe the debut as: Fucking hopeless. Embarrassing, like Bambi on ice. And 2) while Weah may have been a marvellous player, if he had vouched for Dia, a future career as a scout looked improbable.

It transpired, of course, that Weah had never heard of Ali Dia and that it had, in fact, been a classmate of Dia’s that had phoned Souness. On that winter afternoon, Southampton fans had been left bemused, wondering, how could this have happened? Souness had played for Sampdoria, managed in Turkey. ‘Ulubatli’ had contacts. Continental savvy. How could he have been mugged off like this by a simple phone call? Reader, had they access to our time machine, they would have been all the more puzzled, given the Scot’s self-avouched knowledge of foreign cultures, that his great perspicacity, sadly, did not extend to the African.

While there is a harmless pleasure in this story, it’s simple enough to understand. A classic con job. A Senegalese Mrs. Doubtfire with brass balls and a funny way of running. But what if the con had been an inside job? I’ll explain. Now, most football fans have heard of the Dia debacle, it’s all but legend. Yet I’ll warrant most won’t have heard of the other Senegalese to have signed for a leading European football club in the 90s without anyone knowing if he could actually play football. Limamou Mbengue did just that, joining Atlético de Madrid on January 16th, 1998. Just as those Southampton supporters two years prior, fans of Los Colchoneros (meaning mattress-makers, for the leftover fabric from which the wives of the factory workers made the club’s first kits) were left scratching their heads: who the hell is this guy? Reader, with our time machine, we will come back to Mbengue in the third and final part of NOBODY F**KS WITH THE JESÚS but for now let’s stay in 1998. For there was hardly time to process the news. After all, he wasn’t the only incoming transfer. Atleti had also signed a Nigerian, Abass Muyiwa Lawal. Along with Bernado Matías Djana, from Angola. And not forgetting, of course, Maximiliano de Oliveira Teixeira, a Brazilian, and the cousin of Denilson’s chauffeur’s mum’s neighbour’s adopted son. (OK, that last bit isn’t true). Football hipsters did not yet exist, but if they did, not even the biggest tash-twirling Swiss Raiffeisen Super League-viewing hipster would have heard of these guys. Nobody had heard of them. They were essentially real-life Football Manager regens. From where did Atleti sign them? Why, from Promociones Futbolísticas, of course. And no, that’s not a third-division team in Bolivia, it was a private company that Jesús Gil had set up. What does that mean? Well, it means he owned the players privately. As in, they belonged to him. And he had just sold them to the football club of which he happened to be president. Jesús Gil passed four objects from his left hand to his right hand and charged money for doing so. Some €15 million, in fact, an astronomical figure at the time. The only catch? They weren’t actual footballers. In the case of Mbengue, he was a refugee living in Spain having claimed asylum. In effect, the president of Atlético de Madrid had gone and done an Ali Dia on his own club. And if you thought that was bad form from a club president, well, amigos, as The Bobbettes so wonderfully sang, You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet.

In Part 1 of NOBODY F**KS WITH THE JESUS, I delved into the humble beginnings of Jesús Gil y Gil—from childhood poverty, to failed veterinary student, to wheeler dealer in second-hand cars, before rising to power as a property magnate—until falling from grace as a convicted criminal.

Last time we left off with Gil freshly released from jail after going down for a few months having been found guilty of mass manslaughter (his substandard construction of a restaurant had resulted in the deaths of 58 people in 1969). For many, that would have been the end of their story, the shame enough to cause them to quietly slink into obscurity, not wanting to bother the pages of the history books ever again. But not Gil. For one thing, he wasn’t made that way. He was simply too recalcitrantly flamboyant for that. For another, while he had been released from his jail sentence early, Gil was still legally obliged to pay millions in compensation. And he only had the one way of doing that. Selling parcels of land in the town that he built, Los Ángeles de San Rafael.

Just one problem. It was the very scene of the tragedy that had landed him in jail in the first place. Buying a plot of land on which to build your dream home in a Gil’s utopia circa 1971 would have been about as appealing as an off-cuts match day beef burger in the middle of the vCJD outbreak. Perhaps, in these dark days, Gil recalled an old solution to an old problem. When the gears of the second-hand motor he was trying to flog were grinding, he knew how to add oil to silence them. Now that oil would be reinvention. Gil understood that it wasn’t just Los Ángeles that required metamorphosis. He did too. And so, with little other option, he pulled up his (considerable) trousers and got stuck into a PR-rebranding. And how to start fixing the cosmetics of his tragic town? As an old man in a bar in Madrid once told me: Listen, Spaniards love three things above all. Football and tits. It was a philosophy Gil took as gospel. Like his spiritual scion Donald Trump would some years later, he would host Ms. Universe contests on his property. Miss Spain pageants. And just as he had done before the tragedy, he would hold music concerts, the latest pop craze (within the bounds of Franco’s strict censorship laws, of course) drawing crowds from far and wide to little old Los Ángeles de San Rafael. Even the great Rinus Michels would bring his Barcelona side to stay in Gil’s properties, locals agog at the sight of the legendary pair of Johans, Cruyff and Neeskens. If Gil understood nothing else, he had always grasped that entertainment can breed legitimacy. And in Spain, there is, of course, no greater and more profoundly beloved entertainment than football.

When he discovered that Vicente Calderón, revered Atlético de Madrid president (the stadium was renamed in his honour), was bringing the team to nearby Segovia for pre-season training, Gil went on a charm offensive. We’re left to wonder what kind of stops he pulled out to do this but one thing is certain, they would become firm friends. (To this day, Atleti still undertakes pre-season physical training in Los Ángeles de San Rafael).

Gil knew football was Spain’s opiate of choice. If he could somehow finagle his way into Atlético de Madrid, not only would it be good PR, it would be good money. Here was a man with debts. Here was a man that craved power. And suddenly, here was a man with an idea: what if football wasn’t just a bit of grass with a bunch of blokes running around on it? What if you could dig beneath it? And what if you would find there was pay dirt. But befriending the president of one of Spain’s most successful football clubs was one thing. Replacing him was another. Particularly if you knew nothing about football. Then again, that hadn’t stopped Gil selling cars. Or selling land. Or selling pipe dreams to banks telling them all the while it was reality in exchange for huge loans. Still, it begs the question: how in the eff did he manage it?

“My father didn’t understand anything about football,” Miguel Ángel Gil Marín would tell HBO. “In fact, I think he died without understanding football.” That may be true, but what Gil did understand was how to charm people. As his youngest son, Óscar Gil Marín, would say: “Football was the platform he chose on which to reinvent himself and make himself known.” Gil himself, wearing a purple silk scarf, a gold pocket watch, and flanked by ebony statues of cranes and naked women, explained his ingratiation process very simply during an interview. “I started speaking with Don Vicente Calderón, anyway, after that, I joined the board and I was only there four months. That’s how long I lasted because I didn’t like it, the traditional system back then was… different. The majority were on the board for personal profit and gain from the club. That’s why clubs have such huge debts.” As such, Gil, remarkably, has the bright idea (and the bollocks) to present himself as the anti-corruption candidate. He stood against the excesses and rackets present in football. “This is exactly the same thing he would do later when running for Mayor in Marbella,” says Gil biographer and journalist Juan Luis Galiacho. “It’s always the same with him you see, he’s very repetitive in all of his little ways. But Calderón believes in him. He thinks that Gil is the only one capable of saving Atlético de Madrid from the dramatic financial situation it was in. That’s when the elections for the club presidency are announced.”

It was 1987, and a handful of solid candidates presented themselves for the presidency of Atlético de Madrid. Among them, Enrique Sánchez de León, a solid and clear-sighted candidate, a man that had been in cabinet as Minister of Health and Welfare. “Gil? It’s a difficult mystery to explain,” he told HBO’s The Pioneer (2019). “How does a delinquent become a charismatic leader of a collective? I was a serious and boring candidate. People knew me through politics. And I tabled [for the club] a realistic panorama. But the attractive candidate was Gil. His personality overflowed. He created compelling fictions. He was someone that every single day would aliment the press, he created controversy.” Galiacho would underscore the important role the press played in Gil’s victory. “He gains the support of the media, particularly (renowned sports journalist) José María García, they all support him. José María García was a god back then, there wasn’t a single Spaniard that didn’t listen to him. Me included.” As for poor old boring Enrique Sánchez de León? Well, José María García himself explained it. “Look, he was a good bloke. Intelligent. Well-prepared. In those things, he had the advantage. But he was boring. Flavourless. Now, he respected the law exquisitely. The thing is, football back then? It was a world without laws. And the momentum was with Gil.” (It didn’t hurt, of course, that García had Gil on the radio all day long). Sánchez de León went from being the clear favourite, a noble, elegant steed out in front of the peloton, to feeling the sour breath on his croup of a donkey catching a second wind. What’s more, Gil had a plan. Once again, he would bet on artifice over art. He was selling another dodgy motor, this time to all of Spain. He needed a big sodding dollop of oil to quiet the grinding gears. He needed a cosmetic WMD. And he had just the man for the job. It was a tactic that Florentino Pérez would copy years later at Real Madrid when nicking Figo from their eternal rivals. “Atlético needs a game-changer,” Gil would say. “And you can count on one hand how many of those there are in the world today. Van Basten at Milan, and so and so over there, and so and so over there (y tal y tal, meaning so and so, was Gil’s catchphrase, and it would later become the title of his TV show—more on that anon). Who’s the true star right now? It’s Futre, who is 21.”

Handsome, talented, and lightning fast, the young olive-eyed winger had just won the 1986-87 European Cup, putting in a man of the match performance in the final against Bayern Munich. He’d already won two league titles. The world was at his feet. So, how to convince Paulo Futre to sign for Atleti? Just as he had sweet-talked banks into granting him vast loans to build his as yet non-existent utopia, and just as he had convinced Vicente Calderón into moving his pre-season to said utopia before charming his way into inheriting the presidency, Gil went on a PR offensive. He donned his aviators, took a private jet, and flew out to Milan. Gil recounted the story to national Portuguese broadcaster, RTP. “We went to a private hotel in Milan because we had bought the rights to Futre, and now we had to actually talk with him! So, I saw the Porto players in the lobby of the hotel. I looked down at their shoes and I noticed, on one of them, the name Futre was written. I said, so this one is Futre.” To this day, the Portuguese recalls the meeting. “He was a big, strong man with gold chains. I’ll never forget that moment. The meeting was incredible. Everything we asked for, he accepted. I would say, I want X, and he would say OK. Then he would add, what about a house? And I said, hm, a house? OK. And he said, no problem, with a pool. Car? He was asking me! So, I replied. Uh, Porsche? And him, OK, Porsche.”

Futre became more than a star signing to Gil. He would become club captain for much of his time at Atleti and, as many have noted, including Gil’s own children, Futre was more like a son to Gil. “My dad’s dream was to present Futre in Jacara nightclub and to do these elections his way.” With Futre in tow, now driving a dealership-new Porsche, Gil won the presidency by a landslide. The mayor of Los Ángeles was now a football president. “I was saddened to see how easily the masses were won over,” said Enrique Sánchez de León. “Good, innocent people, lapping up demagogic, unrealistic ideas. Well, that’s populism, no? All that matters here is Futre and beating Real Madrid.” In a packed stadium, the players would take to the field, Futre now among them wearing the number 10 shirt, to bathe in the applause of the overjoyed fans. And Gil, as ever, would have something to say about it. “We’re going after every trophy! Atlético de Madrid has changed, it has somebody to defend it now,” Gil then told perhaps the greatest of all his lies, wrapped up in a distorted truth. “Also, from now on, you can be sure that we won’t do crazy things. Every peseta paid out, won’t be paid, unless signed off by me.”

And in the beginning, those pesetas rushed out of Atleti like a great dam giving way. Gil hadn’t just signed Futre. In the first week, he also brought in Marcos (father of Chelsea’s Marcos Alonso), Eusebio Bejarano, and even World Cup-winning manager César Luis Menotti. In one of those wonderful quirks of fate, he also signed the menacing and vaguely simian-looking Andoni Goikoetxea, The Butcher of Bilbao, who infamously framed the boots he wore on the day he broke Maradona’s ankle. Menotti, Barcelona manager at the time, was left incensed, and it would cement a rivalry with Bilbao manager and polar opposite Javier Clemente for years to come. For Jesús Gil, signings players would rarely be much of an issue. Across 17 years as club president, he would bring in 166 of them, almost a whopping 10 per season. He wasn’t shy about hiring and firing managers either. By the end of his presidency, his total stood at 39. Some seasons were crazier than others. 1993, for example, saw him go through no less than five. In the end, it works out to over two managers a season—not exactly ideal when you’ve promised we won’t do crazy things. “His great failing as a president,” said Paulo Futre. “Was his lack of patience. Defeat just wouldn’t enter into his head. If you lost twice and drew once, that was it, curtains. You’re fired. And he would sack the manger. It was terrible. It was terrible in the dressing room.” The ever-eloquent Menotti, following his inevitable sacking by Gil in March of 1988, would describe the man as “just a brute copy of Capone.” His successor didn’t have much more luck. And by January of 1989, Marca’s headline would read: THAT’S 3. Ron Atkinson would tell the same newspaper: I don’t know anything officially, but I bet he’s given me the boot. February 1990 rolled around and the headline in El Mundo Deportivo read thusly: GIL AXES CLEMENTE. “For me,” Gil famously said on the topic. “Sacking a coach is like having a beer, I could sack 20 in a year. Or 100, if needs be.”

But it wasn’t just his stance on managerial appointments that was being noticed. It wouldn’t take long for Gil’s financial abnormalities to catch up with him. As early as May 1989, national newspaper ABC went with the headline: GIL’S FINANCIAL IMBROGLIOS ARE REVEALED AT ATLÉTICO. But revealed or not, it wouldn’t be enough to put the breakers on Gil’s outside-of-the box thinking when it came to financial imbroglios. During the 1990-91 season, Gil unveiled his latest masterstroke: Atleti’s new club sponsor would be the city of Marbella itself. A town of which, in the summer of 1991, he himself would become mayor. And that single word, MARBELLA, would infamously run across the chests of the players for the next few seasons. “It seemed almost like an act of charity, no?” said councillor Isabel García Marcos (more on her later). “But it stood out. It made you think: Gil has done this for free? He doesn’t do anything for free.” Just as Gil had used music and Miss Universe to flog his real estate up in the mountains, now he was using Atleti to do the same for Marbella.

At any rate, up until now, Gil had talked a good game. He’d brought in players. And he’d kept his promises to the fans (or so it seemed). Except for the one about going for all the trophies. 1991 would be the year that changed. On top of becoming mayor of Marbella, his team finally brought home some silverware. The Copa del Rey final was a dogged affair. Alfredo Santaelena scored four goals during his Atleti career but one of them will live forever. In the 111th minute, he notched the only goal of the game. Tears welling in his eyes, Gil would recline in his seat and cover his mouth with the emotion. “Another dream come true for him,” says Paulo Futre. “Everything was possible with this man.” Futre himself handed Gil the cup, as if repaying the paternal faith he had reposed in the Portuguese, a son coming home with straight A’s. Gil, standing in the director’s box, lifted the massive trophy almost one-handed and smiled for the crowd that he had delivered for. “Gil quickly now sees it,” says Galiacho. “Now he’s not the marginalised one anymore, he’s not stigmatised by the tragedy of Los Ángeles de San Rafael that had plagued him for so long. No, he’s the new god.”

It seems somewhat more normal today; a businessman not just suddenly donning the hat of a politician, but running for public office and, despite having no relevant qualifications or experience whatsoever, somehow, emerging victorious. Up until 1991, that had never been seen before in Spain. But what made Gil think he was cut out for politics? (Other than being a black belt in Machiavellian dealings, of course). He himself, answered that question many times. But his answers, as they so often were, would always be tailored to the audience. Helping his fellow man, trying to right wrongs, believing in the general spirit of human advancement, pick a card, really. But it’s hard to ignore the word ‘opportunity’ when it comes to Gil’s every move. Or, perhaps it was simply that the sweet taste of victory in 1987 with Atleti had given him an appetite for elections. That warm rush of acceptance, the people have spoken and they have chosen me. It’s easy to imagine Gil wanting more of that. And it’s a given that he wanted more money. But he must have known that, after enjoying a landslide in Madrid, he would be playing on an altogether more complex pitch against trickier opposition. And in politics, it would take more than a Portuguese winger with green eyes to win over voters. Yet the methods he had applied to his earlier successes were still bankable for Gil. That great victory meant that, whereas he had always understood the value in PR and selling an idea, now he grasped the true power of appealing to populism. If you gave the people what they wanted, however unconventional or base, they would love you for it. And so, it was a philosophy that he would export to his political candidacy for the mayorship of Marbella just four years after Futre. But his opponent this time around could not have been more different to Enrique Sánchez de León: a young, attractive blonde socialist, Isabel García Marcos wasn’t afraid of saying what she thought to Gil’s face (he, in turn, would call her a whore to hers during council meetings). Many years later, talking to HBO, she would acknowledge the man’s star power. “Many would have liked to have been like him. He was a bit of an idol to many. We can’t deny the truth. When he was well into his term, suspicions that he was a thief would arise. But the people would say: I don’t care, they’re all the same. At least this guy actually does things for us. It’s terrible. But people thought that it was true.” Those trademark bombastic shows of flamboyant wealth and unapologetic appeals to lowbrow populism did not go away. Gil merely transferred them southwards along with his new far-right political platform: Grupo Independiente Liberal. Or just, GIL. (And yes, really).

In the end, Gil won the race for the Town Hall by a landslide. One of his first acts as mayor was to, repugnantly, install a bust of Franco in the town hall—as if to signify a new way of governance, one that required only the decisions of a single man. He was in the habit of strolling through Marbella insulting any homeless people or sex workers (despite secretly paying them off for their exile). His police force, some of which was made up by elite military legionnaires recruited from postings in Northern Africa, were told to be tough on crime. “When I came to Marbella, it was like the Wild West,” Gil told veteran interviewer, Jesús Quintero. “But I have the best police force in Spain. They’re sensational because they fight. Just to fuck with people, I’ve bought them Harley Davidsons. Tourists take photos. Look, it’s no point of pride, but according to the prosecutor, these delinquents today say, with this son of a whore Gil, you can’t even GO to Marbella anymore.” As stated, Gil was tough on crime. Depending on what sort of crime one meant by ‘crime.’ Not so much on British or Russian gangsters, however. Marbella infamously became a haven for them. Not to mention, heavy hitters in the world of evil subhumanity such as Otto Remer and Léon Degrelle, who would happily swerve extradition and elude any kind of justice for their war crimes as Nazis. And yet, all the while, Gil would push for crackdowns on back alley drug users, sex workers, and foreigners. Civil liberties? Those got in the way of improving the quality of life in his town. Unsurprisingly, by the time of Gil’s death, corruption was so deep-rooted in the Marbella council that it had to be dissolved. Though it was a move common in Italy when dealing with Mafia-infiltrated municipalities, it had never been done in the history of Spain. Another first in Gilismo. And, who could forget, the TV show he hosted on Telecinco, live from a jacuzzi surrounded by young women in swimwear, The Nights of So and So. (Imagine the lovechild of Babestation and TFI Fridays if produced by Paul Nuttall). In short, there was nothing quite like it on TV. José María García, who unsurprisingly became Gil’s lifelong friend, recalled on HBO: “One day [after seeing him on TV] I said to him: Jesús, you beast. What are you doing with five birds in a hot tub? And he said to me: friend, I am selling Marbella.” It was, essentially, a live variety show with Gil at its heart. There might be some kids breakdancing, or you might see Benny Hill getting slapped in the face by Gil, but that was the fluff. The main feature was the Q&A where people around Marbella could ask the great man questions directly. One elderly gentleman asked: what would you do if you found out your son was a faggot? Gil replied with a characteristic mix of the reprehensible and the reasonable: “Man, I think it’s a bit weird, personally. I mean being with a bloke in bed and, uh, looking at him and all that? No. I think it’s a bit weird. But when it comes down to it, in the end, I think above all you have to respect it. If my son were a faggot. Or my daughter a lesbian. Or a prostitute. I would help them always. And respect them always. And always be their friend.” (This sentiment clashed somewhat with his own football transfer policy: once I was going to sign an important player and then I found out he was a faggot and I thought, no, that one can’t go in my team changing room). Whether it was the pearls of wisdom, the slapstick, or just the tits, Las Noches de Tal y Tal pulled in a national screen-share of 40%. Of course, it would later transpire that Marbella city functionaries would be waiting near the jacuzzi, off-camera, for Gil to sign official documents. How could such an absurd situation arise? Perhaps because this man had grown accustomed to people carrying out his every word, no matter how ridiculous or egregious. Another one of his many talents: making the unreasonable sound eminently reasonable.

By now, Gil was known throughout all of Spain. People were talking about Gil. One imagines he hadn’t conceived of the idea of a live TV show with wisdom and wabs just for the lark of it. What he wanted was exposure. That would lead to expansion. And it worked. His political vehicle, Grupo GIL, not only allowed him to talk about himself in the third person, it was getting stronger. Spreading throughout the coast, he sent his acolytes and children (sound familiar?) in his stead to represent his brand of his bawdy ‘common sense’ xenophobia — going back to basics with pyrotechnics and open bars. And he wasn’t just limiting himself to mainland Spain. Gil would later blame his downfall on State persecution triggered by this expansion. For he had set his seedy sights on Ceuta and Melilla, Spanish territories in Northern Africa, planning to turn them into a Mediterranean ‘Hong Kong’ with floating casinos and effective control of shipping and tourism routes towards the Caribbean and beyond. This was not only stepping on toes of national security. It felt like a first move towards a higher office, above football, and above Marbella. What if Gil was, whisper it, thinking of running for the presidency of Spain itself? We’ll never know how he would have fared in a such a complex political kaleidoscope as the general elections in Spain. Though he was two for two back then, it was never to be. (And, frankly, thank f**k for that).

But back to his interview with Jesús Quintero. When asked the question, but who votes for you, Gil was uncharacteristically pithy. “Everyone votes for me. Because they want well-being. They want their livelihoods looked after.” He wasn’t wrong. Grupo GIL was re-elected three times. Reader, you must have realised by now that Gil cut corners and thumbed his nose at regulation every step of the way. Quelle surprise then, eh, to learn that he didn’t stop once he had been elected to public office. As sure as mercury runs into mercury, corruption runs into success. And that corruption still stands today, the white, denticulate punctuation of his apartments against the Marbella skyline, like some ageing movie star’s unnaturally shiny teeth.

But why Marbella in the first place? The truth was, Gil hadn’t just appeared overnight. It wasn’t civics that had attracted him, it was making money. He’d been present in the city long before 1991, forever trying to erect his luxury structures, like a frenzied spider. In the mid-1980s, in the thick of a slipshod real estate boom wherein banks would supply more financing than was strictly necessary, time and again, Gil found himself falling foul of city planning regulation. On the 14th of August 1987, the headline in the newspaper Diario Sur would read: MARBELLA COUNCIL SEEKS THE PARALYSIS OF JESÚS GIL CONSTRUCTION WORKS. Despite lacking the permits, he would continue building, defying first the mayor who ordered him to desist, and then a judge. Six weeks later, the headline in the abovesaid newspaper ran thusly: JESÚS GIL DENIED NEW BUILDING PERMIT IN MARBELLA. “This structure is the beginning of the Gil era here,” said Alejandro Dogan, vice president of the Residents Association of Marbella on Antenna 3 in 2019. He was gesturing towards a large, white luxury apartment complex—with its tiers and glass atrium and porthole windows, it looks more like a cruise ship. “Gil began the construction of this building but he was not given the permits by the city authority and they halted it. Okay, he thought, if the local council has stopped my construction, how can I obtain the permits? Very simple, I’ll become mayor, and that way I’ll give myself the permit. Of course, after that he began to realise what a gold mine this town was. That is to say, if you were willing to bend the rules a bit, your feet only had to touch the ground here and you would find money under the very stones. And that’s exactly what he did.” Whenever Gil came up against a regulation that inconvenienced him, like the eighth of so many Henries, he would ask: but why does it have to be that way? “First off, he realises that these rejections are relative,” said his opponent in the 1991 mayoral elections, Isabel García Marcos. “Then he realises that by bribing certain public officials, what ‘cannot be done’ suddenly transforms into what can be done. When problems arose, he thought: how do I make this go away? Well, I pay. He’s given the permits and those buildings are still standing there today.” As Gil’s deputy mayor, Antonio Sampietro, pointed out. “Nobody stopped it [Gil’s building projects], no-one said that permit is incorrect. Why? Because everyone, everyone, everyone had a lot to keep quiet about.” When asked about these bribes in an interview, Gil dismissed the notion. Sitting before two (presumably) Ming dynasty vases in his home, wearing a khaki safari shirt open almost to the abdomen, and his neck and wrist resplendent in gold which glared in the hazy grain of the 80s soft focus camera, he reasoned: “There isn’t a developer out there that has built a square meter without paying 5-15% commission. This is a common practice, everyone knows this. Listen, this was not a bribe, this was an extortion. Of me! They extorted me!”

García Marcos unpacks that notion. “And so, he begins to caress the idea: why pay someone else when I could just become mayor and then build as much as I want? And that’s how he arrives in politics in Marbella.” Part of Gil’s nefarious genius was understanding that the public didn’t require a squeaky-clean image. Honesty, even when admitting malfeasance, was a breath of fresh air to them. It was even loveable.

During a campaign rally, Gil would tell his crowd the following: “I’ll make you all rich. And I’ll clean the shit off the streets of Marbella.” It was a simple platform. It always was with Gil. He was going to make Marbella great again. Just as with Trump, and Berlusconi, in a complicated, precarious world of grey outcomes, Gil shrugged, as though society were overcomplicating things, and promised people solutions in black and white. “Why are people excited about Gil?” he asked the crowd in the third person he was becoming so accustomed to. “Because there’s a state of anxiety here. The worst thing that can happen to a city is already happening: indifference. I will change that in one year. For me it’s as simple as A, B, C. I don’t see any problems.”

Ultimately, Gil’s central election promise was change itself. And on that, at least, he delivered. In his 11 years in government, Marbella went from 49,000 households, to a staggering 127,000. Who knows if there are numbers for the money generated by his back-of-the-envelope property gold rush during that decade. When all was said and done, Gil left no more tangible political legacy than the brick and mortar that one can still reach out and touch today on the streets of Marbella. And it stands to reason that this had been Gil’s main political objective all along—at least to begin with. He wasn’t too bashful to admit this truth either to Jesús Quintero. Gil laid his beliefs bare:

Q: Why did you get into politics? What do you know about politics?

G: Me? Nothing. I don’t want to know anything. Why did I get into politics? I’ve said it a thousand times. I was president of Atlético de Madrid, I had my fame, people knew me, and I get into politics because I had millions for sale, everything was bankrupt, Marbella was ‘Mr. For Sale’, and nobody was there, no investors, no promoters, not even God Himself. Everyone left. So, I was heading for total ruin. I made myself mayor, uh, I mean I won the elections, to defend my patrimony. I mean the patrimonies of others, not mine. There was a minister once, the poor woman, I won’t say her name, she was saying: be careful with Gil, if you make him mayor, he’ll only go and put up his apartment blocks. And I thought, she must be a dickhead. Because yeah, I’ll put up my apartments, but his apartments, and your apartments too. It’s not like anybody’s selling any of them anyway. Before me, one flat was selling every six months, nobody could even pay the interest. We’ve gone from there, to me selling flats that a worth a million pesetas per metre. Is it really so bad to create wealth? And then people say, no but he’s building in a green zone. Yeah right, I’ll build a house on the branch of a tree. These people can go take it up the arse, for God’s sake. They always say the same, that I’m illegal, that I’ve violated this, I’ve violated that. I’m always violating everything. People have no solidarity. People have no gratitude. Never do anything thinking people will appreciate it. This is the human condition.

Q: Do you not believe in your fellow man?

G: No.

Q: People say that Gil is involved with the mafia. That you protect them.

G: I don’t know anything about the mafia but let me tell you a barbarity. Maybe the mafia has to exist. Because justice doesn’t exist. The justice we have is a joke. I’ve heard that said. It’s just a sentiment I have.

Q: Have you paid off journalists?

G: No. The media calls me up. On the day they stop calling me, maybe I’m lost. But I have a capacity to respond with the truth.

Q: Have you bought judges?

G: No, you can’t buy a judge. (It would later transpire that a certain judge in Marbella, Pilar Ramírez, had re-assigned every single case against Gil to herself, only to then shelve it. Up until the intervention of the corruption unit in Madrid, not a single case against Gil had succeeded. Pilar Ramírez was promptly disbarred).

Q: Do you believe in the justice of men?

G: No. Men by their nature are unjust. We’re not perfect.

Q: Do you believe in politics?

G: I hate politics.

With his stunts and larger than life persona, Gil had indeed, as he told his friend, been busy selling Marbella. And it would ultimately be that selling of Marbella, by jumbling together the football club over which he presided and the city that he oversaw, that would land him in jail. But that was still a few years away. For now, Gil had other problems to deal with. Because just a year after landing the mayorship of Marbella, things were already starting to go wrong back in the capital city. Atlético de Madrid’s very existence hung in the balance. And if he lost this fight, it would mean that Atleti had disappeared on his watch, just as those 58 lives had in his collapsed restaurant. As Paulo Futre would say: “The only thing Gil was afraid of? It wasn’t politicians. It wasn’t judicial intervention or jail. It wasn’t even the president of the government. It was the Estadio Vicente Calderón full. Because it would make his hands sweat.”

NOBODY F**KS WITH THE JESÚS [Part 3]

NOBODY F**KS WITH THE JESÚS [Part 1]