Daughter of divorced parents, miss, actress, single mother, baroness, art collector, widow, surrogate mother… these are some of the chapters from Carmen Cervera’s book of life, which today, Sant Jordi’s Day, celebrates his 80th birthday.
Tita, as her friends call her, has been the focus of the news since 1961, when at the age of 18 she won the Miss Spain contest, representing the province of Barcelona, ​​because she was born in Sitges. Her parents separated when she was little, but since there was no divorce law they had to keep up appearances. She was born into a working class, although her mother dedicated a lot of effort to take her to select schools that would allow her to rub shoulders with the upper classes or with international figures.
The first was the Hollywood star, although in low hours, Lex Barker and he became her first husband. Seven years later, in 1973, and in the middle of the divorce process, Barker died of a heart attack and Tita became a widow and heir to the Mas Mañanas house in Sant Feliu de GuÃxols. Her second husband, the playboy Espartaco Santoni, cheated her financially, ruined her and her personal life, since he was still married to her previous wife.
Tita began her acting career in the middle of the Spanish transition and therefore breakout cinema. In 1980 she became a single mother with the birth of Borja. Shortly after, she met Hans Henrich von Thyssen-Bornemisza, whom she has defined as the love of her life. They married in 1985 and Borja was adopted by her mother’s third husband.
Converted into Baroness Thyssen and with Swiss nationality, she entered the circles of the European aristocracy and with art experts, since the Baron had a pictorial collection of great value. Tita starts her own art collection and convinced her husband to set up his great artistic legacy in Madrid, something he achieved in 1992 with the inauguration of the Thyssen museum, but which made her at odds with the baron’s children and with other governments that also they wanted to have it.
That happy and quiet time ended in 2002 when she was widowed for the second time. A few turbulent years begin: in 2007 she moves away from her son when he decides to marry Blanca Cuesta and claims all the inheritance that the baron left him. Distancing that lasts until now, although there have been stages of a certain rapprochement, especially thanks to Manolo Segura, Borja’s biological father, who maintained a relationship with her son, Blanca and her five children.
Also in 2007, Tita, at the age of 64, became the mother of twins, Carmen and Sabina. A birth with controversy because it occurs in the United States by surrogacy and with the question of whether the donor was hers, her Borja’s son. The girls have been her great joy during all these years, along with the new museums inaugurated with part of her collection in Malaga and Sant Feliu de GuÃxols.
Although she lives in Andorra, due to her problems with the tax, it is very likely that today she will celebrate her anniversary at Mas Mañanas, her refuge on the Costa Brava, accompanied by her two daughters and who knows if she will receive the gift of a visit from her son and their grandchildren.
