In the mid-fifties of the last century, the American star Ava Gardner decided to move to Madrid. It was front page news as were the details of her life in the more than 10 years that she lived in the capital of Spain, recounted in the fictional miniseries Arde Madrid. It was unusual at that time for a celebrity to leave Hollywood to live under the Franco dictatorship.
Seven decades later, it is no longer unusual for an international artist to choose Spain to live, but it is still something remarkable. That is why this week the fact that the American actress and producer Eva Longoria is going to settle in Marbella with her husband Pepe Bastón and her son Santiago has been in the news. The Desperate Housewives interpreter has been frequenting the Costa del Sol for 20 years and at the beginning of 2023 she bought a house. She has now put her Los Angeles mansion up for sale to start a new life in Spain. Marbella was where aristocrats such as Alfonso de Hohenlohe and Gunilla von Bismarck made their home in the seventies and eighties, but also actors such as Sean Connery, Deborah Kerr, Stewart Granger and Dolph Lundgren, recently.
Yesterday it was also learned that Luke Evans will settle in Madrid, specifically in the Malasaña neighborhood with his partner, the designer Fran Tomás. The British actor resides in London although he usually spends time in Spain, a country that the model and actor Jon Kortajarena, his previous partner, discovered him. In Malasaña they will be neighbors of the British pianist James Rhodes married to the Argentine actress Micaela Breque and also of the Armenian violinist Ara Malikian and Nata Moreno. The couple previously lived in Zaragoza.
For love he will also settle in Madrid, but in La Moraleja, at the end of summer, the actor Richard Gere with his wife, the Spanish Alejandra Silva, with whom he married in 2018 and they have two children in common. Until now they lived in Connecticut. The American actor Viggo Mortensen did the same a long time ago, when he began his relationship with the Spanish actress Ariadna Gil in 2009. They both live in Chueca. Josh Hutcherson (The Hunger Games) has also chosen Madrid to live, as it is the hometown of his girlfriend, actress Claudia Traisac.
Ernesto de Hannover has been residing in Madrid for two years, where his partner, Claudia Stilianopoulos, and his son Christian live. In Madrid it seems that the German aristocrat has found love again in the Spanish capital, but he does not calm her down, because he continues to use bad manners with photographers.
The British actor Joseph Fiennes has been residing in Mallorca for more than a decade with his wife María Dolores Dieguez, of Spanish origin, although born in Switzerland, and their two daughters. On another Balearic island, Eivissa, is where the British singer James Blunt lives with his wife Sofía Wellesley and his children.
Shakira also left Miami for love to settle in Barcelona, where she started a family with Gerard Piqué, a footballer for FC Barcelona. After more than a decade together, the couple separated and the Colombian singer decided to return to Miami with her two children to start a new stage. The American actress Amber Heard, on the other hand, took refuge in Spain after the miseries that came to light in the defamation trial brought against her by her ex-husband Johnny Depp. After a few months in Mallorca, she has been living in El Viso, in Madrid, for a year.
And finally, the Alicante town of Adsubia was for many years the refuge of the Oscar-winning British actress Julie Christie with her husband Duncan Campbell, until age forced them to return to the United Kingdom to be closer to their families. It was not age, but to be closer to their loved ones that motivated Penélope Cruz and Javier Bardem to leave Hollywood and return to Madrid and also Antonio Banderas, who lives between Málaga and Madrid, where he has just bought a penthouse
