"I don't know if we would describe it as a reconciliation or not, but it's true that they're spending quite a bit of time together since the relationship with Isabel (Preysler) ended." The environment of Mario Vargas Llosa does not confirm to EL PAÍS that the Spanish-Peruvian writer and his ex-wife and cousin, Patricia Llosa, have returned, but he does not deny it either. After overcoming covid-19 for the second time at the Ruber clinic in Madrid, Vargas Llosa and her cousin traveled to Sicily a few days ago to spend a week with some of their children and grandchildren. This getaway to southern Italy seems to be part of the tour that the Nobel Prize winner has undertaken to "reconquer" who was his wife for half a century. In recent months, they have been together in Paris, Lima, Santo Domingo, Sicily and, as this newspaper has learned, now in Madrid. "On all these occasions, the family, or at least part of it, has been present," clarify the sources consulted by EL PAÍS.
According to those same sources, Vargas Llosa and Llosa will spend much of the rest of the summer together, although no one wants to put a name or labels on the relationship that the author of The City and the Dogs and his cousin and ex-wife now have. "It is not for us to say whether that relationship is romantic or of another nature, but the important thing is that the family clan, which had been somewhat broken for seven years, has certainly been re-established," they conclude.
More informationMario Vargas Llosa: "I don't regret anything"
Mario Vargas Llosa and Patricia Llosa separated in the summer of 2015, eight years ago, when the writer began a relationship with Isabel Preysler, widow of former socialist minister Miguel Boyer. The author and his wife had just celebrated fifty years of marriage in New York when the magazine Hello! announced by surprise the romance of the "writer" and the "socialite". At first, Patricia Llosa and her three children, Álvaro, Gonzalo and Morgana, issued a statement in which they were "surprised and very saddened" by the news. Then it was learned that Vargas Llosa and Preysler had begun to see each other in February 2015, after a performance of Los cuentos de la peste at the Teatro Español, while Patricia was traveling.
According to Vargas Llosa's entourage, the writer and Preysler kept their meetings secret for almost five months. In May 2015, the writer and his wife celebrated their golden anniversary at Le Bilboquet, an elegant restaurant on New York's Upper East Side. During dinner, Josefina Vargas, granddaughter of the novelist, gave an unforeboding speech. "I imagine that reaching fifty years of marriage must be very difficult, almost nobody arrives today. I look forward to celebrating many more anniversaries," he said. A few weeks later, on June 4, hours before Vargas Llosa left New York to return to Madrid, he told his wife and children that he wanted to separate. After landing in Spain, he left his house on Calle Flora and settled in an apartment hotel. On June 10, ¡Hola! uncovered her romance with Preysler.
Mario Vargas Llosa with his ex-wife Patricia Llosa and his son Álvaro Llosa at a gala organized by Vanity Fair on October 6, 2011 in Madrid. Pablo Blazquez Dominguez (WireImage)
The seven years of courtship of Vargas Llosa and Preysler were not without controversy. The author of The Civilization of the Spectacle (2012), a critical essay with the pink press and the culture of exhibitionism, starred in numerous exclusives with his new partner in the magazine ¡Hola!. The end of their relationship was not peaceful either. In December of last year, the socialite announced in her weekly header the breakup. "Mario and I have decided to end our relationship for good," she said. The environment of the so-called "queen of hearts" blamed it on his alleged jealousy. The writer's environment attributed it to the lack of interests in common and the boredom and weariness that the Nobel felt before a life of agreed exclusives, reality shows and flashes. The winds, an autobiographical tale partly inspired by his experiences with Preysler and the world of cuché paper, went viral and has just been published in France.
"I don't regret anything," Vargas Llosa himself said in an interview with El País Semanal, published in February of this year. "I'm not going to talk about Isabel, not at all. They are two very different worlds, very separate. But, well. The experience was lived and that's it, I'm back at home, surrounded by my books," he explained to journalist Manuel Jabois. That same month, he invited his ex-wife to his admission ceremony at the Académie française in Paris. According to the environment of both, there, in the French capital, where they fell in love more than half a century ago, "they have begun to write this new chapter of their history."
In his interview with El País Semanal, Vargas Llosa clarified that his experience with Preysler had been "magnificent, but not literary." "You can't turn it into a novel, that," he stressed. His next novel, due out in October, is entitled Le dededica mi silencio.