NOVELIST, ex-left wing politician and Nobel Prize winner Mario Vargas Llosa is now divorced in Spain, where he has moved to since starting a relationship with model Isabel Preysler.
Vargas Llosa (pictured right) had been married to his cousin, Patricia Llosa (pictured left) since 1965, and after 50 years together when he was caught with half-Philippino Preysler, admitted he and Patricia had separated.
He was married for the first time at age 19 in 1955, to Julia Urquidi, his aunt's sister but no blood relation as the aunt in question was married to Mario's mother's brother.
Julia is 10 years older than Mario and the family did not approve – but the marriage only lasted nine years, ending when they were living in Paris, although in this time it inspired Vargas Llosa's novel Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter.
Mario holds joint Peruvian-Spanish nationality, and says his divorce is now finalised in Spain but, under Peruvian law, he and Patricia remain married.
It took the couple six months to reach an agreement over the asset split and alimony for Patricia.
Mario, 80, and Isabel, 65, have become Spain's and Latin America's glossy-magazine sensation since they were first spotted together, and have only recently appeared in public as a couple.
Isable, born in Manila to a wealthy couple – a Philippine mother and a father who was a descendent of Spanish immigrants in Germany and who became managing director of the Spanish Credit Bank in Manila – was married to veteran crooner Julio Iglesias for seven years, until 1978.
She is mother to second-generation pop sensation Enrique Iglesias, to Julio Iglesias Junior, and Chabeli Iglesias.
Isabel married the Marquis of Griñón, Carlos Falco in 1980, then divorced after five years and, in 1988, married socialist economy minister Miguel Boyer, who died two years ago, a year before she started going out with the author of Feast of the Goat, The Way to Paradise and The bad girl.
