#son vida

‘Villa Solitaire,’ Son Vida, Mallorca, Spain,

Villa Chameleon, Son Vida, Mallorca, Spain,

Princess Grace of Monaco between her mother, Margaret Kelly (on the right), and an unidentified lady (left) in Palma de Mallorca, Spain, in the mid-1960s.

PRINCESS GRACE WANTED TO LIVE IN MAJORCA

The American princess arrived on the island four days after her wedding and chose as her favourite country “Spain, I spent my honeymoon there”.

By Matias Vallés. April 27, 2025.

Lecturas magazine has unearthed a secret that Rainier's wife revealed to the publication during an exclusive interview at the Monegasque Grimaldi Palace in 1968. When asked about the European country where she would like to live apart from her place of residence, she highlighted “Spain, I spent my honeymoon there”. Given that Mallorca was the epicentre of their wedding trip and the only Spanish geography where the couple stopped, twelve years before the revelation about the dream destination, the insular candidacy is clear.

The reception given to Princess Grace justifies its long-standing longing. The Mallorcan presence began at the wedding reception itself, where artistic glass goblets from Casa Gordiola had been hired. Moreover, Mallorca was the first destination of the newlyweds in April 1956.

Four days after the lavish wedding, Grace and Rainier were already disembarking at Cala Gentil de Formentor. They were travelling aboard the motor yacht Deo Juvante II, a luxurious 44-meter restored vessel that had been Aristotle Onassis' wedding gift to the couple, and which they therefore made their first voyage to Mallorca before visiting islands such as Corsica and Sardinia.

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Upon disembarking from the yacht ‘With the Help of God II’, the princes of Monaco attended a gala dinner in her honour at the Hotel Formentor, which, before its destruction, had a suite dedicated expressly to the princess, next to the rooms once occupied by Chaplin and Churchill.

The arrival in Palma of the Monegasque princes can be catalogued without exaggeration as multitudinous. In those pre-digital times, a thousand of palmesanos were concentrated in the port to contemplate the couple of the year, who had covered in their brand new yacht the journey from Formentor.

The pressure from the crowd was so insistent that Grace and Rainier were forced to step out onto the awning of the yacht to greet the crowd. The gesture was received by people with a round of applause. This completed the stellar reception that undoubtedly influenced the princely nostalgia of the honeymoon, and the desire to settle in Spain was revealed to Lecturas magazine.

Grace of Monaco is linked to the two hotel establishments that frame the golden age of Mallorca in the 20th century, which has since been surpassed by the gold-chained hamburgers. Five years after their honeymoon in Formentor, the princes inaugurated, together with Onassis and Maria Callas, the Son Vida hotel, of which both magnates were partners. The princess had plenty of reasons to evoke an island that idolised her.