The event, a large request party before dozens of aristocrats, took place in the mansion of the bride’s maternal grandparents, at the time Marquises of Santo Floro. It was the day that Marta Chávarri signed her sentence as famous for the rest of her life. At that party in the spring of 1982, she Chávarri not only promised herself in marriage to Fernando Falcó, Marquis of Cubas, but she also promised herself as the sister-in-law of Isabel Prseysler, then married to Carlos Falcó, Marquis of Griñón.
Marta was the eldest daughter of Tomás Chávarri, then ambassador of Spain to the OECD; and Matilde Figueroa, daughter of the Marquises of Santo Floro and granddaughter of the Count of Romanones. She, Matilde, had died just three years before her daughter’s wedding due to a stroke. Marta Chávarri’s wedding with Falcó —she was 21 years old and he was 42— was held on June 2 of the same year in the Cathedral of Plasencia, and was celebrated in the palace of the Marqués de Maribel, the same one that hosted the wedding of Álvaro Falcó and Isabelle Junot in 2022.
If during the eighties Chávarri became a prominent member of Madrid’s high society and queen of the covers of ¡Hola!, the following decade awaited her even more eventful. It was January 22, 1989 when the paparazzi caught Marta Chávarri, still the Marquise of Cubas, in Vienna with the CEO of Construction and Contracts Alberto Cortina, still the husband of Alicia Koplowitz.
It was the only scandal of the time that could compete in interest and media coverage with the surreptitious romance of Isabel Preysler and Miguel Boyer, and both were semi-starring the Falcó brothers. And since everything stays in the family, the Marquis de Cubas, things of fate or rancid ancestry, found love again with Esther Koplowitz, the sister of the other victim in the infidelity that forged her marriage.
As if everything were not enough, when the romantic-financial scandal was the main topic of conversation, Interviú magazine published on its inside pages a stolen image of Chávarri, who, in an oversight, showed what was under her skirt without underwear, only guarded by a thin transparent stocking. He made international news by publishing a British tabloid “The knickerless marchioness.” But in that morbid publication of Chávarri’s image he hid much more, since the photograph was the material for blackmailing Cortina to stop the merger of Banesto and the Central Bank, although it was the publication of the snapshot that finally stopped the annexation.
And if for something it can be compared to Preysler and Marta Chávarri, it has been for the times that their love scandals have moved from the pink pages to the salmon-colored ones. Both starred in two separate love scandals at the time that moved to the political and economic spheres. Isabel, due to her relationship and subsequent marriage to Miguel Boyer while he was the super minister of the first Government of Felipe González; and Chávarri, for frustrating the merger of Banesto and the Central Bank with her extramarital affair with Cortina and with her neglect of wardrobe.
Beyond the scandals, Chávarri was quite an it girl in the eighties and nineties. But after the discovery of her affair with Cortina, the press began a fierce task to get stories about her that very often took her to court to protect her privacy, her honor and her own image. In recent years she has been completely separated from her, some say that she is hidden, from the press and social events, due to a domestic accident that left her with obvious facial paralysis. The last time she was seen in public was to accompany her only son, Álvaro Falcó, to the altar in April 2022. Marta’s life has been full of ups and downs. Today she is mourned by her whole family and those nostalgic for the golden years of the biutiful people.
