SISTERS MAKE A WINNING COMBO

Meet Valentina-Maria and Victoria-Maria Geyer, who have pooled their skills and talents to fashion a beautiful and colourful family home in southern Spain

- ANA FERNÁNDEZ DE CÓRDOBA

The German sisters Valentina-Maria and Victoria-Maria Geyer may have taken different directions in life but there's one place where they can be sure their paths will always converge, and that's in Spain's gorgeous Costa Del Sol - specifically in a picture-perfect cortijo complete with white walls, terracotta-tiled roof and shady patio, set in serene countryside between Marbella and Sotogrande.

It was Valentina, a holistic therapist, and her husband, Nicolas, who found the estate, moving here from Brussels last year. But Victoria, who runs a successful interior design business in the Belgian capital, flies in regularly to visit.

Now, as the siblings look forward to long summer days on the estate with their families - they're both mothers of three - they tell us what makes it particularly special.

"We renovated this place together," Valentina reveals. "And because we each have quite different creative worlds, the end result is a beautiful fusion of our visions."

Valentina, what made you decide to move here?

"My husband Nicolas and I had spent some wonderful years in Belgium. We'd developed our careers and raised our children, Samuel, Josephine and Emilia, there. Then we began to feel we needed a new purpose.

"We wanted to live closer to nature, to reconnect with ourselves and the environment and to share that with others. We searched for more than four years in different parts of the world until we finally found this house, with its incredible views. It was love at first sight.”