Isabel Preysler and Mario Vargas Llosa split up after eight years together

Isabel Preysler, 71, has ended her relationship with Mario Vargas Llosa, 86. “Mario and I have decided to put an end to our relationship for good,” the famous businesswoman and socialite told ¡Hola!, the popular celebrity news magazine.

For eight years Preysler and Vargas Llosa, who are based in Spain, have formed one of the most written-about and atypical couples in the world of celebrity news. The Peruvian-born Vargas Llosa is a winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, a newspaper columnist and a former politician. Preysler, who was born in the Philippines and moved to Spain as a teenager, has worked as a journalist but is best known for her role as a high-profile socialite and for becoming an early influencer in the pre-internet era.

The breakup, she told the publication, is due to the fact that each one wants to go their separate ways. In mid-December, after a fit of jealousy, the writer allegedly walked out of the home they shared. “December wasn’t the first time Mario left the house,” writes the journalist Mamen Sánchez in the article.

In the 1970s, Preysler was married to the popular Spanish crooner Julio Iglesias, whom she interviewed while working as a reporter for ¡Hola! herself. They are the parents of the singer Enrique Iglesias. After her divorce from Iglesias, she married the entrepreneur and nobleman Carlos Falcó, and was later wedded to Spanish Socialist minister Miguel Boyer.

Preysler and the author of The Feast of the Goat first met in the 1980s. “I saw Mario for the first time in St. Louis, Missouri, when I interviewed him in 1986 for ¡Hola!”, she said. At that time, Preysler was still married to Boyer, while Vargas Llosa was married to 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.”

Their relationship did not go further until 2015, when they met on a trip organized by Porcelanosa, a brand that Preysler has worked with for years, to visit Prince Charles at Buckingham Palace. Preysler had been widowed the previous year. Llosa and his wife had just celebrated their golden wedding anniversary.

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