The relationship between Isabel Preysler and Mario Vargas Llosa ended as it began: in the middle of the scandal.
“Mario and I have decided to end our relationship permanently.” With this statement, the Philippine socialite confessed exclusively to the magazine Hello! from Spain that she was ending her media courtship with the Peruvian writer and politician.
Preysler, born in the Philippines 71 years ago, ended an eight-year relationship with the 86-year-old Peruvian Nobel Prize winner. During all that time they had made up one of the most mediatic couples in the heart press, especially since at the time of making their relationship official, in 2015, the Nobel Prize winner was still married to Patricia Llosa, his cousin, and with whom he had recently celebrated the golden anniversary of their marriage.
“I do not want to make any further statement and I thank my friends and the media for helping us in this decision,” were Preysler’s words to the Spanish magazine.
As revealed by this medium, In mid-December, after a scene of jealousy, the writer left his partner’s house, where they both lived, and settled in his home in the center of Madrid.
However, “December was not the first time that Mario left the house,” explains journalist Mamen Sánchez in the ¡Hola! article. “It had already happened on one occasion before for the same cause, and that this attitude is recurring is what has convinced Isabel that it is not worth continuing to bet on a relationship with no future that makes both of them unhappy.”
As Preysler also clarifies in Hola, the reason for this separation has not been third parties, but rather that both have lost, “little by little, the illusion of the beginning”.
an unexpected relationship
It was also in Hola, in 2015, where Preysler and Vargas Llosa had confirmed their sentimental relationship.
Isabel Preysler came to Spain from Manila, Philippines, at the age of 17, by order of her parents, who wanted to keep her away from a love they considered inappropriate.
In Spain, however, according to the newspaper El País, he ended up in the arms of Julio Iglesias. After the singer, she married a nobleman, Carlos Falcó, and later with a socialist minister, Miguel Boyer. Despite the incessant rumors about her, she did not go down the aisle with Vargas Llosa.
The two had met in the eighties. “I saw Mario for the first time in St. Louis, Missouri, when I interviewed him in 1986 for Hello!”, the businesswoman explained years ago. At that time, Preysler was married to Boyer, while Llosa shared a life project with his wife, Patricia Llosa. “From then on, Miguel and I established a good friendship with Mario and his wife, which has been maintained throughout all these years.”
The love relationship between the two arose in 2015, when they met on a trip organized by Porcelanosa —a Spanish business group of which Preysler has been a visible face for years— to visit the then-Prince Charles of England at Buckingham Palace.
The Filipina had been widowed the previous year. While Llosa had just celebrated the golden wedding with his wife.
But the love between the two grew and became evident, and in a short time the news of their relationship was hinted at and confirmed in the heart press around the world.
Since then they have formed one of the most unusual couples in entertainment, not only because of their age (Preysler will be 72 in February and Vargas Llosa will be 87 in March), but also because of their respective professions: he, politician and writer; she, socialite, businesswoman and a permanent protagonist of pink magazines.
In 2020, during the celebration of the tenth anniversary of his Nobel Prize, The Peruvian had told the Spanish media that his new partner had renewed his vocation as a writer in him, the best thing that—he said at the time—had happened to him in his life.
The Spanish press, which during these 8 years has kept track of the relationship, has spared no qualifications now that they are no longer together: “they seemed to live a mature love story, although, apparently, they have been victims of the immaturity of a youthful passion”, “Vargas Llosa is left without a girlfriend, but he already has the plot for a novel”, writes the newspaper La Vanguardia today.