The Sanchis Villa was built in 1904 by Sanchis. Colonel Vincente Sanchis y Guillen, its first owner, was a soldier of career and man of letters. It was amongst other things appointed of Santiago of Cuba to the Cortes, ordering place and wearing of Bilbao and became officer of the Légion d’Honneur.

The new owner, the general count Gregoire Nostitz, former military attaché of the embassy from Russia in Berlin then in Paris, chef d’état major of the imperial guard, personal representative of the tsar with allies in 1917, it belonged following Nicolas II.

His wife the Nostitz countess, American of birth and old member of famous “ Palmer Company ” of New York, was considered in Russia one of the great ladies of the mode tsarist, very cultivated and able to be expressed in five languages. This period of her life, she tell it later in her work “Lovesong and Revolutions”. She organized afternoon of bridge or mah-jong and thés dansant  very appreciated at the Sanchis Villa. The count Nostitz dies in 1926 in Biarritz.

Two years and half after the death of the count, she marries in a second weddings the son of a family Sévillane, Manolo Dionisio Fernandez y Azabal called “the Andalusian of the Biarritz or best of the gentlemen bullfighters”. After the religious ceremony, it is with the Sanchis Villa  that had place “modest” a reception of 81 guests.

In September 1952, Fernandez y Azabal gave a cocktail of good-bye to the Sanchis Villa.

Sources : « Biarritz promenades » par Monique et Francis Rousseau

                « Aux quatre coins de Biarritz, ces maisons qui ont une histoire » par Monique Rousseau

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