Sixty years since one of the most famous arrests on the Costa del Sol, that of Frank Sinatra

It was on this date, 19 September, although it was not a Thursday but a Saturday in 1964. A day that ended up being anything but quiet at a police station in Malaga. The reason for this was the illustrious 'visit' of the famous and indomitable actor and crooner Frank Sinatra to the province. However, on this occasion, his entourage, his angry protests and his threats to get the US ambassador to Spain on the phone were of no use to him. He ended up being arrested and was taken to the police headquarters. He was neither sent to a cell and put behind bars nor was he ever convicted. It was all just an arrest, a statement and a fine that was enough to make the ticker-tape news around the world. The next day, the story was on the front page of SUR and numerous newspapers with the headline: "Sinatra, fined 25,000 pesetas".

The script for episode began just a few days earlier, on Wednesday 16 September, when the Oscar winner for From Here to Eternity' (1953) landed at Malaga Airport on board his own private jet, the like of which was unheard of on the Costa del Sol at the time. He was picked up by a Gibraltar-registered Cadillac and was then quickly on his way to a suite in the luxurious Pez Espada hotel in Torremolinos. He stayed there while filming Von Ryan's Express in the impressive natural locations of El Chorro and El Caminito del Rey, where he arrived every day by helicopter. As in this war film, the actor arrived at the hotel with loaded guns, but it all backfired when he went down to the restaurant, where he had an altercation with a journalist and a budding actress.

That problem was the result of a story that started badly before filming began. From the moment director Mark Robson was told that Sinatra would play the lead in the film to be precise. Sensing what problems might be coming, the filmmaker tried to cast William Holden, who was also available. But producer Darryl Zanuck wanted the Italian-American star. A determination that the filmmaker did not understand, although if he had known about the horse scene in the film The Godfather - released more than five years later - perhaps he would have understood his producer's decision better.

And indeed, the filming turned into a pitched battle. Sinatra made, unmade and even proposed to change the ending of the film, which exhausted the Canadian director's patience. Robson wanted to find the ammunition to confront his intimate enemy and sent a report to Fox describing the situation and the cost overruns it would cause, as well as the actor's "offensive" attitude towards the filmmaker himself. What director Mark Robson did not expect was that, in this war behind the cameras, the producers who had imposed the "enemy" on him at home, would change sides and reply that the only star to shine in the production was to be Sinatra.

However, Hollywood's carte blanche was not going to be enough for the actor and singer with the Spanish authorities. He made few friends on the set. The most notable thing was his flirting with one of the actresses in the cast, a very young Raffaela Carrá, who let herself be loved, but who ended up giving her seductive partner a hard time. Nor did Oscar-winning artistic director Gil Parrondo, who did not disguise his experience, have fond memories of the star: "Sinatra was an egomaniac, difficult to deal with, except for the waiters, who he gave 100 pesetas as a tip".

However, we don't know if he had time to give any thanks to those who served him at the Pez Espada grill, because the situation soon got out of hand. The actor approached the terrace and was approached by a Cuban actress. Everything was normal until a photographer from the newspaper Pueblo, J. F. Avellaneda, took out his camera and took a picture of Sinatra with his momentary partner. Then, a glass flew and a big altercation broke out between the artist, his bodyguards, the actress and the journalist, which ended with the latter filing a complaint against the Hollywood star at the police station.

The next day, police arrived at the hotel to take the actor's statement, but Sinatra refused to talk to them and locked himself in his room. In statements given by a eyewitness, kept by the Pez Espada hotel in its safe, it was recounted how Sinatra demanded to speak to the US ambassador, cursed the police officers for treating him like a "criminal" and compared the Spanish police to the "Gestapo". The production manager, Eduardo García Maroto, recounted in his memoirs that he interceded with the authorities to prevent the scandal from escalating and to allow the actor to finish filming at El Chorro. At the end, the actor would testify. The police agreed, but did not forget. On his way back from filming, on the Saturday, he was arrested.

The actor was fined 25,000 pesetas for contempt of court - the incident with the alleged actress and the photographer came to nothing, as everything seemed to indicate that the American was the object of a trap - and, after paying the fine, he was taken directly to Malaga Airport, where he was put on the first plane out of Spain. He fled via Paris. A curious paradox. Sinatra came to Malaga to film the scene in which he escaped from the Nazis, but ended up repeating an escape scene in real life. Surpassing fiction, with scandal included, and with the memorable line: "I'll never return to this damned country".