The nice loves of Mario Vargas Llosa: Aunt Julia, the cousin Patricia and the pal Isabel | Culture | EUROtoday
The temporary and stormy marriage of Ernesto Vargas and Dora Llosa marked her solely son, Mario Vargas Llosa. The author’s dad and mom separated 5 and a half months after having married, when the kid was not even born. The little Mario grew up along with his maternal household, believing that his father had died. A very long time later, when he had grey, the Nobel understood the rationale for the marital failure of his dad and mom: resentment and social complexes. “Because Ernesto Vargas, despite his white skin, his clear eyes and his bet, belonged. The fish in the waterpublished in 1993.
With those background, it is not surprising that Vargas Llosa seeks love within his own family. In 1955, with 19 years, he met Julia Urquidi, sister of her aunt Olga, whom she knew since childhood. The “aunt” Julia, as she called her, was 12 years older than him, had just divorced and was visiting Lima to spend a few weeks on vacation with her family. The writer, who was studying the third year of the university, fell in love with that mature woman, with a high and graceful figure, hoarse voice and strong laughter.
The couple kept the romance for a few months. When the family learned, Ernesto Vargas threatened his son and urged him to solve the situation. The young Mario, who at the time had just published some stories in literary magazines, concluded that he had to legalize his relationship with Urquidi. Aunt and nephew escaped and married in secret in the town of Grocio Prado, on the Peruvian coast. The mayor of Grocio, a fisherman, and a neighbor of the town served as improvised witnesses. The newlyweds, without money or support from their relatives, celebrated the link providing with coca-collars.
Back in Lima, the Vargas and Llosa families tried to separate them. The marriage moved to Paris, where he continued studying and writing. Then he began to wonder if it had not been a precipitation to have married. “Not as a result of we had been going fallacious with Julia, as a result of we had no extra disputes than any frequent marriage, and the reality is that Julia helped me in my work and, as an alternative of obstructing her, I inspired my literary vocation. But as a result of that zeal of the start had turned off and had changed it a home routine and an obligation that, at instances, I started to really feel as slavery,” the writer would remember in his memo. “Time, as an alternative of shortening the age distinction, would dramatize it till it turns our relationship into one thing synthetic.”

His predictions ended up being fulfilled. The romantic link ended up going to Pique in 1961 when Vargas Llosa agreed in Paris with his cousin, Patricia Llosa Urquidi, daughter of her uncles Lucho and Olga. He, with 25 years, was finishing his first novel, The city and dogsand she, with only 16, was doing some courses of French culture in the sorbonne. Patricia and her sister, Wanda, spent a year at Casa de Vargas Llosa and Julia Urquidi in the Military School area, in the Campo de Marte.
Less than three years later, the writer separated from the “aunt” Julia to marry the cousin Patricia. The history of this mess has two literary versions. In 1977, Vargas Llosa published Aunt Julia and the writer, A novel inspired by his own love story. In 1983, the “aunt” Julia replied with What Varguitas did not say, A confessional story that portrayed the misadventure of life in common with a womanizer incorrigible.
“These tales occur on daily basis, in every single place on the planet. I’ve not been the one one, the primary one, nor will I be the final lady who has lived between heaven and hell by wanting to avoid wasting a love that solely existed for her,” said Urquidi about her book. “Of course, in both stories there are more inventions, misrepresentations And exaggerations that memories and that, when writing them, I never intended to be anecdotally faithful to previous facts and people and outside the novel, ”Vargas explained. He added:“ In both cases, as in everything I have written, I left some experiences still alive in my memory and stimulating for my imagination and fantasized something that reflects in a very unfaithful way those work materials. No novels are written to tell life but to transform it, adding something. ”
Mario Vargas and Patricia Llosa ended up marrying and living their first years of marriage in Paris, where they began friendship with the Chilean writer and diplomat Jorge Edwards, the Lima narrator Julio Ramón Ribeyro, the guerrilla Paúl Escobar and members of the divine left Latin American of the time. They had three children: Álvaro, born in 1966; Gonzalo, in 1967; and Morgana, in 1974. Marriage had its ups and downs. Two years after the birth of Morgana, Vargas Llosa had a strong fight with his friend Gabriel García Márquez. Neither of them explained the reason, but in the Nobel environment they suggest that Patricia could be the reason.
At the Nobel Prize ceremony, in 2010, Vargas Llosa cried with emotion by mentioning his cousin and wife. “Peru is Patricia, the cousin of a snapped nostril and indomitable character with which I used to be lucky to marry 45 years in the past,” he said in a broken voice. “Without her, my life would have dissolved in a chaotic whirlwind and Álvaro, Gonzalo, Morgana or the six grandchildren,” he added. “She does all the things and all the things does. Solve the issues, manages the financial system, places order in chaos, retains journalists and intruders at bay, defends my time, decides the appointments and journey, makes and undoes the luggage, and it’s so beneficiant that, when she believes that I channel me, it makes me the most effective compliments.”
In May 2015, they gathered their entire family in New York to provide for their gold weddings. A few days later, the magazine Hello! He published some photos of the Nobel with Isabel Preysler, old friend whom she met in 1986, when the Socialité He interviewed him for that pink weekly. “Photographed collectively at a lunch for 2 in Madrid,” he titled the Magazine of the Heart. This information stated that the Vargas Llosa marriage was separated. Patricia issued a statement in which I said: “My youngsters and I are shocked and really sorry for the images which have appeared in a coronary heart journal. Just per week in the past we had been with the entire household in New York celebrating our 50 years of married and the supply of the doctorate of the University of Princeton. We beg you to respect our privateness.”
Days later, Hello! He published new photos of Vargas Llosa and Preysler who confirmed the courtship. “This is a relationship born of an infidelity,” said Gonzalo Vargas Llosa, son of the writer. The novelist’s relationship with the Socialité He moved him away from his family and brought him closer to the world of a spoon paper, a world that he had strongly criticized in his essay The civilization of the showpublished in 2012.
Vargas Llosa, who had denounced the banalization of arts and literature and triumph of yellow and frivolous journalism, was now a character of the Heart. “Do you understand how many specimens promoteHello! In Spain per week? One million, ”he stated through the press convention of his novel Five corners. “What would not give a novel author for a million magazine readers …Hello! It is a cultural phenomenon of our time. It offers life in pink. In it all are rich, they are all happy, everyone attends activities that produce pleasure. There are millions of people who want that material that makes them dream. Before it was the novels that offered it. ”
His media courtship with Preysler, splashed with appearances in photocallsporcelain parties and even in the reality show De Tamara Falcó, threatened to tarnish her literary prestige. But what started as a scandal ended the same. After eight years of courtship, Hello!Hard magazine of the so -called Queen of Hearts, announced the separation. The weekly reported that the Socialité I had left it for a jealous problem. His environment clarified that they were “incompatible.” “He is excited about tradition and the present,” they said. Preysler said that nothing had hurt. He declared in the weekly country that he did not regret anything, but acknowledged that they were of two different worlds.
Vargas Llosa found support and company again in her cousin Patricia, “the cousin of the nostril snapped and indomitable character” of which he had fallen in love more than half a century earlier. She dedicated her latest novel, I dedicate my silencepublished in 2023. “It is a ravishing and deserved gesture,” said the writer’s environment to El País, without wanting to put tags to the relationship. “It doesn’t contact us to say if that relationship is romantic, however the necessary factor is that the household, which had distanced itself for seven years, is once more united,” they added. Vargas Llosa died at his Lima home, accompanied by his cousin Patricia and his youngsters.
https://elpais.com/cultura/2025-04-16/los-grandes-amores-de-mario-vargas-llosa-la-tia-julia-la-prima-patricia-y-la-amiga-isabel.html