Lanzarote collects legendary visitors — and two stories that read like film scripts. The first: in Costa Teguise there is a holiday palace, La Mareta, which King Hussein of Jordan had built and gave as a gift to King Juan Carlos I; today it belongs to Patrimonio Nacional and Spain's prime ministers summer there. The second is even better: in 1973, the Hollywood star Omar Sharif — Doctor Zhivago, Lawrence of Arabia — fell in love with an impossible house built inside a volcanic quarry in Nazaret… and, so the legend goes, lost it at cards playing bridge, his great confessed vice. The house, LagOmar, can be visited today — and the story tells itself. Kings, film stars, astronauts and Nobel laureates: the island's list of the illustrious won't fit on one card.
Every island with charm accumulates famous visitors; Lanzarote, in addition, accumulates stories that sound invented — and are not (entirely).
The first is an open secret with a sea view. In the late eighties, King Hussein of Jordan — a regular in the Canaries — wanted a holiday residence on the island and commissioned the project from the architect Fernando Higueras, with César Manrique's eye present in the spirit of the place: white volumes fused with the lava, gardens, pools and a small harbour, all facing the Atlantic from Costa Teguise. The final move was worthy of classical diplomacy: Hussein gave the whole complex as a gift to his friend King Juan Carlos I. Today La Mareta belongs to Patrimonio Nacional, serves as an official rest residence, and through its rooms have passed everyone from the Royal Family to Spain's prime ministers — several summers of Spanish politics have been decided, or at least rested, facing this stretch of Lanzarote coast. It cannot be visited, but knowing it is there adds a touch of novel to any stroll in the area.
The second story has a casino soundtrack. In 1973, Omar Sharif — the Egyptian actor who was Doctor Zhivago and shared the desert with Lawrence of Arabia — came to Lanzarote to shoot a film. Scouting locations, he discovered a house unique in the world: a dwelling-sculpture excavated in a former rofe (volcanic ash) quarry in Nazaret, a work within the creative orbit of Manrique and his collaborator Jesús Soto, with sitting rooms inside bubbles of rock, hanging gardens and a swimming pool like a film-set oasis. Sharif bought it on the spot. And here enters the legend the house itself cultivates with relish: Sharif was a world-class bridge player — he wrote columns on the game, competed internationally — and, so it is said, shortly after buying the house he lost it in a game of cards. Did it happen exactly like that? Historians raise an eyebrow; the house — today the LagOmar museum, open to visitors, bar inside the rock included — smiles and leaves the mystery hanging in the air. It is, in any case, one of the island's most singular visits: impossible architecture with a side of Hollywood gossip.
The list of the illustrious goes on and on: Raquel Welch running among volcanoes in 1966 (card 22), Pedro Almodóvar filming in El Golfo, José Saramago staying for good (card 51), the ESA astronauts training for Mars (card 21), kings, prime ministers and pop stars on discreet getaways — the island prides itself on being good at keeping celebrities' secrets: nobody chases anybody here.
The local moral: Lanzarote never needed a red carpet. Being exactly as it is was enough — the rest of the world, crown included, came of its own accord.