Independence or death. This was the motto of the empire of Brazil, a State that emerged after becoming independent from Portugal in 1822. The imperial adventure lasted 67 years and had two kings: Pedro I and his son Pedro II, deposed in 1889 by Deodoro da Fonseca, first president of the Republic of Brazil. The current one, Lula da Silva, is the thirty-ninth.
The eleventh, Epitácio Pessoa, wanted the centenary of independence to be celebrated with magnificence with a great international exhibition in 1922 in the capital: Rio de Janeiro. That year coincided with the Copacabana Fort Revolution, an attempted coup born in response to letters, later recognized as false, published in the Correio da Manhã criticizing the military establishment. Fake news from a century ago.
Three kilometers from the fort and following the beach towards the northeast, in that same 1922 a luxurious hotel was built in front of the ocean to accommodate the many visitors to the exhibition. Its construction was a personal request from President Pessoa to businessman Octávio Guinle. In exchange for generous tax exemptions, Guinle promised to have everything ready for the celebrations, although the Copacabana Palace finally opened its doors on August 13, 1923, twenty days after the closing of an exhibition that is a very distant memory, not like Copa, an establishment that is the pride and symbol of the city.
The hotel that commemorated the independence of a European country was made… in the European way, since its architecture was directly inspired by the Carlton in Cannes and the Negresco in Nice. When it was inaugurated, its political promoter had already been replaced by the twelfth president, Artur Bernardes, who was one of the authorities invited to the grand opening party. His successor, Washington Luís, also went down in the hotel’s history, albeit for an unexpected reason. On May 23, 1928, he found himself in one of his suites with his lover, an Italian Marchioness 30 years younger. After a heated argument, Elvira Vishi Maurich took out a gun, fired and seriously wounded him. With the discretion typical of large hotels and especially when dealing with the president of the nation, the transfer to a hospital was secret and quick. When he was there, it was officially reported that Luís had had an attack of appendicitis and he was urgently intervened. She did die. Four days later he committed suicide, also according to the official version.
Ten years after the inauguration, the Copa went around the world thanks to the film Volant towards Rio de Janeiro, the first film in which Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers danced together, and it was set in the hotel . The artistic team never left the RKO studios in Los Angeles, where the lounges and terraces were reproduced to perfection, in addition to filming some aerial scenes over the city with absolute prominence of the beach and the beach hotel, which also became famous for its casino, one of the first in the country and where great fortunes were gambled.
The sixteenth president, Marshal Dutra, again influenced the Cup by banning the game throughout the country and forcing the closure of the establishment’s gaming rooms, which were converted into a theater, a beautiful room that has been reopened a few months ago after decades of disuse. Later came the transfer of the capital from Rio de Janeiro to Brasília in 1960. The big move was accompanied by a certain slowdown of the city, but its appeal and the dynamism of the Rio de Janeiro people once again placed it as desired destination after a few years. It was then that Orient Express, today belonging to LVMH, bought the hotel.
“Except for the mandatory time due to the health crisis of 2020, this hotel has never closed and continues to be the symbol of the great Latin American hotel industry”, comments Ulisses Marreiros in La Vanguardia. Marreiros, Portuguese by origin who has spent many years in Mallorca, is one of those great hotel managers who know absolutely everything that goes on in their house. He is as expansive as he is discreet when the situation calls for it and he is as kind to the most important client (it would be too long to make a minimum list of VIP guests) as to all his staff, more than half a thousand employees. Now he is working on the final preparations for the centenary party, the night of next August 17. The event promises to be played, whether the current president of the Federative Republic of Brazil is present… Or not.
