MADRID, July 7 — Peru’s Nobel Prize-winning author Mario Vargas Llosa has left his wife of 50 years for singer Enrique Iglesias’ mother, Isabel Preysler, according to various Spanish media reports.
It appears the 79-year-old author was unable to resist the charms of the 64-year-old Filipino former model, television host and celebrity journalist, long known in Spain as one of the country’s most infamous femme fatales.
The Daily Beast said Patricia Llosa and the couple’s three children, Alvaro, Gonzalo and Morgana, issued a statement last month after Llosa dumped Patricia for Isabel, saying they were “shocked and saddened.”
The ABC news site in Spain, meanwhile, quoted Llosa’s children as saying the official news of their father’s split with their mother came on June 4, five days after the couple celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary in a gala celebration in New York.
According to a Peruvian TV station, Llosa told Patricia, “I’m done. Now I feel what happiness is. I don’t have much time left.”
He then hopped on a plane to Madrid, where he moved out of the family home.
Llosa’s son Gonzalo told ABC that he has not spoken to his father since June 4, adding that his “priority” now is to support his 70-year-old mother.
Preysler, whose nicknames include the “Pearl of Manila” and “Queen of Glamour”, has been married three times.
Her romance with Llosa comes eight months after the death of her third husband, Miguel Boyer, a Spanish politician and economist to whom she was married for 26 years.
She met Julio Iglesias when she interviewed him for Hola! and married him in 1971. Her second husband was the Marques de Griñón, Carlos Falcó.
While the news about Preysler and Llosa becoming a couple is recent, the two have actually known each other since 1986, The Daily Beast said.
Llosa is considered one of the leading writers of his generation and his works include “Conversation in the Cathedral” and “Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter”.
