First, an apology. For all of those who travelled from near and far for our Merano summer party last Saturday, I’m sorry that I wasn’t able to put in an appearance. If you give me a moment, I’ll explain my absence. Also, if you’re a lover of cats or find them devious, self-centred and just plain wrong, you might want to look away now.

Our story starts early last week in Lisbon. Mom and I are visiting a friend at her apartment for drinks and a catch-up on some work and social matters. The main reception room is an eclectic mix of modernism and crafts, the space is warm and welcoming and the Portuguese bubbly is perfect for a Tuesday afternoon. A couple of our host’s colleagues will join us a bit later, so for the moment it’s just the three of us and three animals – a dog and two cats. They shall remain nameless. The dog is small and curious and well behaved. One of the cats is busy grooming its crotch and the other is on my lap and looking for attention. I’m having none of it. “He’s the one in charge,” announces our host. “He kind of keeps everyone in check.” There is hair all over my navy shorts and now the cat is digging its nails into the seersucker as it tries to get comfortable. This carries on for about 15 more seconds until he realises that he’s not going to get anywhere and that a glass of Portuguese effervescence might end up in his eyes. Off he goes. 

Mom and host are talking about ceramic lamp bases and shades and there’s a question about whether we should stay inside for drinks or venture out. “It’s so lovely here,” I say, “why don’t we just stay in?” Our host agrees and refills the glasses. This is a cue for the cat to go and jump on mom’s lap and start his routine. “He likes to visit everyone,” says the host. “But sometimes he can be a little bit naughty and scratch or bite.”

My mom smiles and I can read the speech bubble above her head. “And you allow this little beast to take centre stage in social settings?” She reaches for her glass but then jolts backwards. “Did he bite you?” I ask. “Mmmm,” my mother replies, pressing her hand. “Are you bleeding?” My mom nods and the cat is scolded in Portuguese by our host (as if that’s going to change its behaviour) and then she’s off to get some alcohol and a bandage.

We carry on talking for a bit but we have a 05.55 flight to Zürich in the morning and I can tell that my mom is uncomfortable and wants to go. We say our goodbyes, jump in a cab and head home. On the way, I inspect mom’s hand. It’s a little bit swollen and she says that it’s throbbing. Back at the apartment, I make an ice pack and have mom settle down on the sofa. We’re up and at ‘em around 04.30 (yes, we live very close to the airport) and somewhere over France I notice that mom’s hand and wrist is becoming more swollen. We touch down in Zürich and I drop a note to Dr Stucki, our family GP.
 
Headline: Mom bitten by cat
Body copy: Dear Dr Stucki, I hope all is well and your summer is shaping up nicely. We just touched down from Lisbon. Mom was bitten by a friend’s cat yesterday. It’s become quite swollen. Thoughts?
 
Within about 15 minutes Dr Stucki has written back and suggests a visit as soon as possible. We drop our things at home and head to her practice in town. By now the hand is starting to look puffy. Dr Stucki takes one look, her eyes wide, and says that she’ll do a blood test, administer a tetanus shot and go hard on antibiotics. “Cat bites, the worst,” she says. “Let’s keep an eye on it and let me know if it changes or gets worse.”

The following morning, I’m up early for a flight to Berlin and take a peek at mom’s hand before heading for the train. It’s considerably worse. In fact, mom’s forearm looks like a mortadella. Photos are taken and sent to the doctor and by the time I land in Berlin mom has been taken to emergency and there’s considerable concern about how rapidly the arm has become infected. I finish my business in Berlin, have a long talk with the doctor and head to the airport. He says that if the antibiotics don’t kick in then they will need to open up the arm and clean it out. He says that he’s concerned about an infection to the tendons. By 21.00 I’m back in Zürich and going straight to the hospital. Mom is in good spirits and watching CNN. I return the following morning to find the bags packed and mom ready to go. “Where do you think you’re going?” I ask. “The doctor is going to come by and tell me that it’s all fine. Then we can go to Merano,” she says. “Ummmmmm, we’ll see about that,” I say, looking at her hand and puffy forearm.

A couple of hours later, the doctors give mom a semi “all clear” but she’ll need to stay on the antibiotic drip for another evening and can leave the next day. I return Saturday morning and consider, ever so briefly, doing the five-hour drive to Merano but mom needs to rest, so I move into nurse mode and we end up having a cosy Saturday evening at home.

One week on and I’m happy to report that mom has recovered, though her right (painting) hand is still a little tender. But she’s back swimming in the lake and back in front of her canvases. The moral of this story is very clear. Cats are generally bad news, not to be trusted and will never be celebrated in the pages of Monocle – this I can promise.

Fancy a friend in Lisbon that doesn’t bite? Our charming City Guide is just the ticket.

In 2019 we put down the deposit on an apartment that was being built in Palma, buying off plan. We had been coming to the island for years, had made good friends, felt at ease in the city and had long wondered how we might make the leap. In the end, the generosity of a couple of dead aunts with no offspring gave us the necessary rocket fuel to set off on our mission.

In March 2020 we came to check on the project’s progress. While in town I went to see my friend Roberto, a potter, in his studio. As we chatted he helped me to make a cup on his potters’ wheel. I assured him that I would return to glaze my masterpiece in three weeks’ time. Then came coronavirus.

We finally made it back in June 2021 and by then I – unlike the wiser, calmer other half – was wondering whether we had made a terrible decision. Coming here suddenly involved five coronavirus tests and a week of home isolation in London. How would this be the gateway to an easier life? 

That first day I walked over to see Roberto and there on a shelf was my now white-glazed cup, which had been matched with a saucer in my absence. Placed on our kitchen counter, it was the first real sign that our apartment would become home – not an escape but still a place where life was often just different, renewing. Magical at times.

Everyone has their edit of a place and ours is beyond eclectic. But if you are coming to Mallorca, here are a few places that you might want to add to your to-visit list.

1. 

For starters, you could go to see Roberto’s work. He has a courtyard shop, PK Studio, at 17 Calle Sant Feliu. It’s open on Thursday, Friday and Saturday mornings. There are non-wobbly cups, plates and works inspired by everything from island myths to ikebana. paparkone.com

2. 

Mallorca was once one of the great production centres for footwear but much of this industry vanished in the 1980s as outsourcing to China took hold. But Carmina is a thriving exception and makes formal shoes for men and women. The front door has a shoe last as its handle; push it open and discover a gem of a store.
carminashoemaker.com

3. 

There’s a good furniture and design shop called La Pecera that produces its wares on the island (we are the proud owners of its lounge chairs). Nextdoor you’ll find its sister business, Medina Mallorca, which sells vintage furniture. On the same strip is a shop for Gordiola, a maker of hand-blown glass – but I would visit its factory.
lapeceramallorca.com; gordiola.com

4. 

We drove up to Sóller this week, hound in tow, for dinner with friends at a new restaurant called Pueblo, from the folk behind the popular Patiki Beach. It’s just opposite the tiny train station, which has the cutest museum of Picasso ceramics. We sat in the courtyard, eating honey-soaked cheese and peppers shawled with anchovies, while making easy work of the rosé. I also like driving up to Hotel Corazón in the Tramuntana Mountains, between Deià and Sóller, and having drinks at the Grand Hotel Son Net in Puigpunyent.
pueblosoller.com; sonnet.es 

5. Also new is the Lobster Club in Portals Nous. It’s from the family that owns the successful Grupo Cappuccino chain of restaurants. The sea view is perfection; you pay more to secure a prime spot when making a booking. Not surprisingly, there’s a lot of lobster on the menu (a touch more sun and I could have been mistakenly served up with a side salad). It’s a yachty, moneyed crowd but fun to observe. And fun is what we all need.
lobsterclub.es

So how about opening your dream hotel in the sun-soaked Med? It might sound tough, or even overwhelming. Luckily, I’ve proved that you can make it happen if you go about it in the right way. Each of us face challenges at some point but the specific isn’t always important – what matters is how you deal with it.

In 2017, I embarked on a project that sounded risky and improbable but exciting: opening a luxury hotel on the Amalfi Coast, an area that has one of the densest concentrations of high-end establishments, all within a teeny 20km radius. Despite stiff competition – and the logistical difficulties of refurbishing a property that was clinging to the cliffside – I knew that I’d assembled the right team, who were driven by the same passion, drive and motivation to make it work, though it didn’t always feel like it.

To succeed, you need a clear vision and to think carefully about what you want to achieve, from the final product to the atmosphere and sense of place. Is there a broader lesson? If I’ve learnt anything, it’s that you need to believe in what you do, which might sound obvious but is often not the case. More importantly,perhaps, you need to be able to defend your convictions at every turn. Doubts might start to creep in as you begin to dream of an easier way of doing things. But don’t allow yourself to accept compromises if it means diminishing the quality.

Today there is a lot of talk in the industry about the difference in becoming part of a hotel chain or remaining independent, especially in terms of operations, as well as sales and marketing. As an independent, our first crucial decision was to choose between the easy option of working with a contractor, which might take care of all the furniture supply, or the more “challenging” alternative of using artisans from the region alongside important Italian design brands. Choosing the latter direction meant absolutely no compromise – we have 35 types of handmade tiles in the hotel and different lights throughout – but our accommodation is better for it.

Be prepared for things to go wrong along the way too. They will. And you have to learn to laugh about them in the hope that they’ll make for funny stories one day. Thinking about the sweat and tears we went through in turning an abandoned mid-century building into the hotel it is today, I sometimes have to pinch myself and ask how we did it. Now, a full six years since we started the project, I can honestly say that it goes back to having the right people around you – in our case a great team of architects, designers, artisans and landscapers.

I’ve also learnt that you really can’t plan and micromanage everything in advance. Sometimes, I have found, it all comes down to a concept from centuries ago. “The best ideas do not come from reason but from a lucid, visionary madness,” said Erasmus, the Dutch philosopher.

In the spring of 2023, a five-day sale was held in Paris to auction off more than 10,000 objects that had made up Venice’s beloved Bauer Hotel. Everything had to go: hundreds of yards of heavy Rubelli silks, wrought-iron terrace furniture, silver champagne buckets engraved with the Bauer Venezia insignia. A smoked-glass mural depicting La Serenissima, which had welcomed guests in the lobby, was dismantled into pieces and sold off. From poster beds and rococo chairs to the room keys, all of the knick-knacks accumulated over a 140-year period were distributed to the highest bidders.

Though the absence of the Central Pavilion in the Giardini will be missed by those attending the 2025 Biennale Architettura, it’s the loss of the now boarded-up Bauer Hotel that stings the most for me. The storied five-star stay on the Grand Canal was an after-dinner staple and the trek along the length of the hotel’s luxurious lobby was a rite of passage for visitors and exhibitors alike. The bar, with the waters of the Grand Canal lapping below the balustrades and an Italian Lady Liberty surveying the action, was the place to see the architecture and design industry’s great and good in conversation over cigarettes and negronis.

Before it was masked by scaffolding and hidden beneath hoardings, the Bauer was a glimpse of the true Venice: an elegant grande dame that could at times seem slightly tired of its own opulence. It was a place where one might have rubbed shoulders with celebrities at the bar, clinked glasses with a sheikha or talked property with a European prince or US tycoon. By the end of the evening, emerging out of the golden foyer, inevitably slightly dazed, it would already be unclear whether any of it had actually happened. The Bauer wouldn’t tell – after more than a century of inviting travellers in, the walls had seen their fill of fantastical events.

The Bauer sailed on until 2019, when its owners, the Bortolotto P0ssati family, announced its sale to US funds, which then passed it on to an Austrian property company, Signa, in 2020. The lagoon seemed to let out a sigh, though it’s not the first time that a Venetian institution passed into the hands of foreign investors. The new owners promptly announced a top-to-bottom renovation in 2022 – cue the auction – and an eventual reopening as a Rosewood-managed hotel.

Little more than six months later, it emerged that Signa was over €15bn in debt and would have to file for bankruptcy. The company had towers under construction in Berlin and Hamburg, and owned prime properties in many global capitals. I was in Venice on the day that construction halted at the Bauer, after Signa stopped honouring its payments. Inclined to snoop, I walked up to the scaffold, which still hopefully advertised the reopening of a “new Bauer” in 2025 as I approached a small wooden door that served as the construction-site entrance.

It was unlocked. Inside, a security guard was dozing in his booth. It was just past 08.00 but nobody was at work. Past the turnstile, I saw the floor that had previously hosted the Bauer’s velvety, low-lit bar and lobby. The entire building, which is made up of a 19th-century palazzo and a modernist annex, had been gutted with only the structural concrete columns left standing. The grande dame looked like an abandoned parking garage.

After a feverish ping-pong match over ownership between multinational investors, allegedly including Bernard Arnault’s lvmh, the property was auctioned for €309m in late 2024 to Mohari, another property conglomerate. The investment that has flowed into the Bauer since 2019 is dizzying and Mohari committed an additional €150m to completing the renovations. My only question is this: for what? I never heard anyone complain about the facilities at the old Bauer. And what will be the result of this expensive saga? Another chain hotel filled with contract furniture?

The Bauer’s valuation is for its prime location on the Grand Canal but also for the position that it occupies in the city’s – and visitors’ – psyche. There’s a further irony to the fact that the very magic that gave the hotel its worth and allure might be destroyed by the renovation that tries to heighten it. It’s futile to blame anyone in particular for the mess. Families want to sell, investors want to buy and architects want to work. But any biennale-goers who find themselves itching for a nightcap and no longer quite knowing where to go might do well to remember the lesson that often – in architecture, as in life – good things are best kept just as they are.

During his second term as US president, Barack Obama joked about the location of his future presidential library. “Some have suggested that we put it in my birthplace but I would rather keep it in the United States,” he said.
     
This gag was at the expense of his eventual successor, Donald Trump, who had done more than anyone else to propagate the fantasy that Obama had been born in Kenya and was therefore ineligible to hold the office of US president. The Obama Presidential Center is now under construction in Chicago. Trump has already proclaimed it as a “disaster”, apparently because of the overhiring of “woke” people and the engagement of insufficient numbers of the “good, hard, tough, mean construction workers that I love” (the Village People thing runs deep).

Trump might believe that it is a bit early to start contemplating his own presidential library. He is only six months into his second term and has yet to rule out seeking a third, whatever the objections of the pettifogging naysayer that is the Constitution of the United States. However, a placeholder website exists (trumplibrary.gov). He also has money to spend, in the form of settlements that he has won against media organisations that have connived to prevent his fellow citizens from fully appreciating the majesty of his rule. There’s Meta, which kicked him off Facebook and Instagram in 2021 for the trifling infraction of attempting to overthrow the constitutional order by force ($25m [€21.5m]); ABC, one of whose presenters outrageously suggested that Trump had committed a sexual assault worse than a court decided that he actually had ($15m [€12.9m]); and Paramount Global, the parent company of CBS, whose show 60 Minutes had committed the unpardonable affront of editing an interview with former vice-president Kamala Harris ($16m [€13.8m], a meagre fraction of the not remotely insane $20bn [€17.2bn] that Trump was demanding).

Under the terms of the settlements, these monies are to be allocated towards the future Trump library. But what will it look like? Reports suggest that a couple of university campuses in Florida have been scouted as potential locations. Hints have also been dropped as to what one of the star attractions will be: the generous and pure-hearted present of the customised Boeing 747 that Trump accepted from Qatar. This is in spite of the purse-lipped resentment of those who grumbled that it was a flagrant bribe, as though Donald Trump of all people could ever be susceptible to such tawdry blandishments.
     
But there is no shortage of other possible exhibits. The classified files that Trump diligently lifted from the White House at the end of his first term for safekeeping in the bathrooms of Mar-a-Lago. The portraits of himself paid for with funds from the Trump Foundation – funds that might otherwise have been squandered on frivolous charitable enterprises. The dozens of expensive gifts from foreign governments that House Democrats allege have never been declared to the State Department as per the footling requirements of the Foreign Gifts and Decorations Act but have been judiciously stored so that they can one day be selflessly shared with the American people. 
     
With the project helmed by Eric Trump and Michael Boulos (Tiffany Trump’s husband), it is very difficult to imagine that the current president’s library, when it opens, will be anything other than a tacky, gaudy folly attached to a gift shop stacked with sweatshop tchotchkes. It might even become the first US presidential library to end up declaring bankruptcy. 
 
Mueller is a contributing editor at Monocle and the host of Monocle Radio’s ‘The Foreign Desk’. For more opinion, analysis and insight, subscribe to Monocle today.

The annual July gathering of London’s designers, editors and retailers at the Serpentine Gallery’s summer pavilion has been a longtime tradition for the British Fashion Council (BFC). It’s a moment to toast the end of the fashion season before everyone disperses for their month-long Mediterranean holidays. 

However, in recent years, designers were noticeably absent and smiles were forced. Conversations revolved around the post-Brexit issues plaguing the UK fashion industry, with some brands having to scale back operations, while others have shut up shop completely or migrated to cities that promise better infrastructure, such as Milan and Paris. Yet this week, when I walked into the Serpentine Pavilion – a long, timber structure by Marina Tabassum – the mood seemed to have shifted. Aside from the upbeat music, flowing rosé and colourful cakes by Sophia Stolz (who cooked in a surrealist Louis Vuitton gown), there appeared to be renewed hope and even excitement that London might finally get its groove back.

The refreshed outlook and ambition shared by Laura Weir, the BFC’s newly appointed CEO, has spurred a change in spirit. Designers clapped with enthusiasm when she announced plans to waive participation fees at London Fashion Week and to double investments in a guest programme that will help bring back international editors, retailers and cultural commentators. As of now, the most important players in the industry have been flying straight to Milan, given the British showcase’s lack of commercial appeal. Weir – a former journalist and editor – is also turning her focus toward education and finding talent beyond the capital. With increased scholarship funding and a new programme that will take established designers back to their old schools throughout the UK, she hopes to show young people living outside London that a career in fashion is possible for them too. 

These are all promising first steps – but what truly reignited faith was Weir’s refreshing honesty. She acknowledged that she has been given a “Herculean” task; that the country’s creative sector is in trouble; and that competition is getting stiffer. “I’ve had conversations with government representatives from Hong Kong, India and the Middle East, and what strikes me is how these superpowers are investing in culture as they build their strategic positions on the global stage,” says Weir. “Some are meeting me to find out more about London Fashion Week and then their governments are funding millions of pounds in building their own. They understand that investment in culture leads to the commercial and reputational success of entire nations. We have all of that in spades – the fashion week, the creativity, the ambition – and yet we are losing talent to Paris, Milan and Berlin because of a lack of infrastructure to support our designers.” 

To convince the creative crowd to return to London, nurturing up-and-coming brands is no doubt a vital part of the solution. But a greater link-up with the hospitality and design sectors, which will help make “brand London” more appealing, is equally important, as is spending the same amount of effort to support the journalists, photographers, stylists and CEOs working behind the scenes. Weir’s task is not just Herculean – it’s epic.

Take a trip to Copenhagen, Stockholm or Oslo right now and you will find these Nordic capitals bereft of locals. The great migration of the Scandinavians to their summerhouses is well underway. 

But the type of summerhouse that each of the old Viking tribes favours says a lot about them. A Norwegian views theirs primarily as a base for friluftsliv (open-air living), which involves unnecessarily arduous tasks such as hiking, canoeing or chopping wood in preparation for a winter of crosscountry skiing, downhill skiing and – I wouldn’t put it past them – probably uphill skiing too. The Swedes’ ideal summerhouse is a hut deep in the woods, far from other humans, with no running water, electricity or heating – plus a cloud of flying, biting things that lurks just outside the door. An idyllic blend to appease Sweden’s primary national urges for solitude and masochism.

Fortunately for this Denmark resident, the Danes take a more laissez-faire approach. A Danish summerhouse is a place to chill, talk, sleep, read, drink and pursue other leisurely pleasures, ideally within sight of a beach. For that reason, it will be designed with the lowest possible maintenance in mind: the grass can grow long (it being good for biodiversity is the excuse); the mismatched furniture is part of the vibe; and never mind the sand in the kitchen – it’s a summerhouse, after all. 

But best of all, when you buy a Danish summerhouse – as I have just done, completing the final piece of my assimilation – it comes with all the furniture, crockery and bedding from the previous owners. What’s in that cupboard? Ah, two decades’ worth of completed wordsearch books and Donald Duck comics. Is that Chinese vase in the toolshed worth anything? The Søstrene Grene sticker suggests otherwise. Will the oven work (no) and what to do with the tiki-style lounge furniture? The answer: give it away on the front lawn. But don’t forget to put the amateurish art back up when the former owner pops round for a friendly coffee.

Yet while a Danish summerhouse might appear a relaxed place, somewhere to escape the relentless narcissism-of-small-differences status race of Copenhagen’s bridge quarters – the truth is that there is still much to decode in the summerhouse landscape.

Location, of course, is a status symbol. It explains why a house two miles (3.2km) from the sea in Tisvildeleje – the once old money, now just money resort on the north coast of Zealand – will cost as much as one right on the beach elsewhere on the island. Meanwhile, Skagen, at the northern tip of Jutland, is the summerhouse resort of choice for the nouveau riche but only for one specific week in mid-July: week 29 (Danes order their year by the number of the week). Locals refer to this as “Hellerup Week”, after the northern suburb of Copenhagen where said nouveaus and social-media influencers otherwise reside. 

The west coast of Jutland holds a special place in Danish hearts and so there are tens of thousands of summerhouses nestled here in the hilly sands that stretch from the German border right up to “Cold Hawaii”, as the northern Jutland surf resort of Klitmøller is known (klit means “dune” in Danish; get over it). But I have never understood the appeal of this coast: for about 363 days of the year, the sea is too rough for swimming and relentless winds whip sand in your face. Is there an exfoliating effect that I’m missing?

Recently, the smart summerhouse money has been heading for the previously unloved island of Lolland to the south of Copenhagen. It’s a bet on the influx of German tourists who will be connected to Lolland via the Fehmarnbelt tunnel, due to open in 2029. But I have a soft spot for the South Funen Archipelago, with its dolphins, fishing harbours and a culture and history all of its own.

As a foreigner, I am free to choose my summerhouse location without all the socio-economic baggage, so I am writing this at my dining table (pine, naturally) looking out on a sandy beach, watching the sun set behind the island in the bay as the local ferry chugs steadily across the horizon. It still cost several times my first flat in Pimlico – for a little wooden shack with a supposedly flat but worryingly bowed roof – but it is, for July at least, home.

Could an athlete influence you to buy a leather handbag? Earlier this month, Bottega Veneta tapped Italian pro tennis player Lorenzo Musetti as its latest brand ambassador – a strategic marketing move announced on the day that he took to the court at Wimbledon. In London, he stepped onto the court in a white intrecciato leather bomber jacket for his first (and, sadly, last) game of the tournament. Aged just 23, Musetti joins Bottega Veneta’s prestigious stable of brand ambassadors, including South Korean singer I.N (of boy band Stray Kids) and Australian actor Jacob Elordi. Meanwhile, Wimbledon title winner Jannik Sinner’s walk-on moment featured an oversized Gucci bag. A global brand ambassador for the Italian house since 2022, his victory no doubt raised the spirits of the label’s marketing team as it gears up for a new chapter under Georgian designer Demna.

Fashion brands leveraging athletic prowess to associate themselves with technical excellence is nothing new. Basketball player Michael Jordan arguably pioneered the modern form of celebrity sponsorship when he signed his first deal with Nike in 1984. But the phenomenon has gained traction in recent years, replacing unapproachable Hollywood stars or online influencers with little more than follower counts on their lists of achievements. Who would you rather work with: a temperamental starlet or a punctual athlete? Carlos Alcaraz reps Louis Vuitton, alongside fellow tennis prodigy Naomi Osaka. In 2021, UK wunderkind Emma Raducanu clinched a US Open title along with a Dior ambassadorship, though the French house has since replaced her with Chinese player Qinwen Zheng after Raducanu failed to recreate the buzz surrounding her early-career wins. More recently, Italian brand Canali selected Greek tennis player Stefanos Tsitsipas to be its very first brand ambassador.

Paris’s Summer Olympics pushed the fashion industry’s interest in sports to fever pitch. French luxury conglomerate LVMH was a major sponsor of the games. The opening ceremony saw French athletes dressed in Berluti and performers, including Celine Dion and Lady Gaga, in Dior. LVMH-owned jewellery-and-watch house Chaumet crafted the medals, which athletes received in a bespoke Louis Vuitton trunk, évidemment.

In the contemporary marketing landscape, a pivot to sportspeople for inspiration and brand loyalty makes sense. Yes, models make for beautiful campaigns and we all harbour the hope that we might look like Vittoria Ceretti if only we wore the exact same Gucci dress. But being born gorgeous isn’t a form of merit that can compete with the discipline, dedication and exceptional skills of athletes. For many brands, sportspeople are a way to signal their own technical expertise and the pursuit of excellence.

A brand ambassador can also provide credibility. Swiss luxury-watch label Richard Mille works with French freediver Arnaud Jerald, who breaks records wearing an RM-032 and vouches for the watch’s ability to withstand watery depths in the process. French alpine skier Alexis Pinturault competes with an RM 67-02, putting the timepiece to the test as he whacks poles while slaloming down snowy slopes at breakneck speed. Whether or not office-working Richard Mille watch owners need this level of technical durability is another matter. It’s knowing that, if so desired, these technical marvels could sustain such strain.

Finally, with the fashion industry worth a reported €1.45trn and the sports world valued at €2.26trn, the maths behind this trend of cross-marketing is clear. Gaining visibility in an arena, stadium or on a court is simply a good investment. Sports fanatics are exactly that: fanatics. For many, the agony and the ecstasy of a game or match is akin to a religious experience, their favourite players saints or, in one case, a Sinner. For now, the luxury fashion houses have kept their sights on more elitist sports. But as marketing budgets shrink, brands might become more strategic with who they select to represent them. Whether or not these brand-ambassador deals will extend to the world of darts or video games remains to be seen.

This week I’ve been travelling around Aragón in northeastern Spain, visiting some of the people I wrote about in Monocle three years ago for a piece about the fight against rural depopulation. This vast expanse of yellow scrubland and verdant forests is at the heart of what the local press calls la España vaciada (literally “the emptied Spain”). Since the years of the Franco dictatorship, people have been decamping from their ancestral villages to the big cities in significant numbers. But, as I have learned over the past few days, it’s a mistake to assume that the Spanish countryside is dead and buried. 

Spain, of course, has huge demographic issues. Like Italy, where I live, it has a low birth rate and an ageing population. Between 2010 and 2019, populations have fallen in nine regions of the country, including Aragón. There are almost 7,000 municipalities in Spain with fewer than 5,000 inhabitants. Yet visit many villages in Spain today and you wouldn’t know it. In Torralba de Ribota, one of the stops on my trip, I find streets full of children playing and running from house to house. The adults, meanwhile, are knocking back ice-cold Ambar beers in the neighbourhood bar. The community swimming pool is packed as locals cool off from the intense heat. 

Summer is the peak season of Spanish rural life, when communities across the country hold celebrations called fiestas patronales (patronal festivals). The kids I see running around are the grandchildren of the old-timers who remained; among the others are visitors who own a second house in the countryside but only use it seasonally, having long ago moved to Madrid, Barcelona or Zaragoza. Torralba de Ribota’s permanent residents joke that every year they meet people who swear that they will buy a house and move here – only for the promise to fade away as the air turns chilly come October.

I’m here to see people who have made Torralba de Ribota their home. Many of them had no prior links to the village beyond a knowledge of Lucía Camón, an actress and the founder of an annual cultural festival called Festival Saltamontes, which took place last weekend. Since Camón’s move from Madrid with her former partner and daughter, Torralba de Ribota – which has a population of 169 – has welcomed everyone from a South Korean painter to a stand-up comic and scriptwriter. A couple in their twenties are the latest to move in. 

Torralba de Ribota is lucky in many ways. It might seem to be in the middle of nowhere but it’s a short drive from the town of Calatayud, which has several fast trains a day that go to Madrid or Barcelona. In other words, Spain’s main metropolises are within easy reach for a meeting or a retail fix. 

While having a creative job that you can do from a studio, workshop or computer clearly makes life in places such as this more viable, comedian Quique Macías says that what the countryside really offers is the chance to take risks. He bought his house for a fraction of what he would have paid in a city and recently purchased a strip of land, where he is now growing pistachios and almonds. He is able to take on only the jobs that he wants to do because he isn’t overburdened with high living costs or an extortionate mortgage. 

At a time when the news agenda is packed with stories about geopolitical turbulence and a cost-of-living crisis, village life offers a quieter alternative. This is a place where generations help each other and the pace is slower, more considered. Torralba de Ribota isn’t for everyone and its charms are unlikely to reverse Spain’s demographic trajectory – but its newest inhabitants are proof that another way of living is possible.

Stocker is Monocle’s Europe editor at large. For more opinion, analysis and insight, subscribe to Monocle today.

With a smile, George Koukoudakis, the mayor of Hydra, nods to a heavy bronze sculpture on his desk. The piece, which depicts a boy sitting atop a dolphin, was gifted to the island’s town hall in the mid-1950s by members of a film crew from US film studio 20th Century Fox. They, along with a young Sophia Loren, had disembarked on this Saronic island to shoot Jean Negulesco’s romantic drama Boy on a Dolphin, released in 1957. It was the Italian starlet’s debut English-language role and the first Hollywood production to be shot in Greece. Like many of his compatriots, Koukoudakis believes that the picture not only changed the way that the world saw his country but also helped to birth its tourism industry. “The film had such an impact,” he says. “People saw Greece in a different way and wanted to visit. It was the Hollywood effect.” 

A restored version of Boy on a Dolphin has been rereleased in Greek cinemas this summer. Almost 70 years on, the scenes of Hydra in glorious DeLuxe Color continue to stir the soul. Athens, Rhodes and Delos also feature, bathed in sun and set against the shimmering sea. One can imagine the effect that such sights must have had on postwar audiences across the globe. Films have the power to take viewers somewhere new, serving as ambassadors for places – think the New York of Breakfast at Tiffany’s, the Hong Kong of Wong Kar-wai’s In the Mood for Love or even Danny Boyle’s dream-like vision of Thailand in The Beach.

Cinema was once a celebration of travel, journeys and placemaking. If this feels inaccurate today, it’s partly because the industry has become less reliant on location shoots and increasingly mindful of budgets. Generic backdrops or green screens can ape the grandeur of a Manhattan crosswalk at a fraction of the cost. Meanwhile, generous tax rebates are luring productions to vast sets in countries such as Saudi Arabia. And budding filmmakers can always take the short cuts offered by generative AI. 

It might be the case that today’s cinemagoers are simply better travelled than postwar audiences and that exotic locales are no longer enough to attract them. But don’t underestimate the ability of a major location shoot to bring fresh energy to a place. In Hydra – an island that’s proudly car-free and has remained relatively unchanged for decades – the power of such placemaking endures. The filming of Boy on a Dolphin is part of its lore and older locals, some of whom were recruited as extras during production, still tell stories of what happened when the big Hollywood crew and actors came to town. 

In a memoir by Australian writer Charmian Clift, one of the many artists who flocked to the island in the 1950s and 1960s, she describes how Loren’s star appeal caused a flurry on the minuscule island that didn’t even have running water at the time. It’s a reminder to young directors and filmmakers that there’s a big world out there – and plenty more places to put on the map, far beyond the well-documented boulevards of Los Angeles or Paris.

In the Saronic Islands, Loren-loving Greeks are indulging in nostalgia as they settle into cinema seats to rewatch the remastered Boy on a Dolphin. Go and see it yourself for a taste of Hollywood’s golden age, when filmmakers wanted to whisk you away to somewhere new.

Fitzgerald is Monocle’s North Africa correspondent. For more opinion, analysis and insight, subscribe to Monocle today.