“The never seen before of Marta Chávarri”. With that headline, the life of the former Marchioness of Cubas changed forever. The publication of some images of her without her underwear while she was enjoying the night in a Madrid nightclub managed to shake the economic and business framework of Spain in the early 90s.
Some images that, added to the cover in which Marta Chávarri’s extramarital affair with businessman Alberto Cortina – then married to Alicia Koplowitz – was revealed; It caused the beginning of the end of the reputation of the hitherto considered It Girl in Spanish society; and the beginning of the most brutal media harassment known to date.
Marta Chávarri died unexpectedly at only 62 years old in July 2023. Contrary to what she experienced in her youth, she had been away from public life for several decades. She always thought that she was used within a power struggle between that business elite of the economic and social world in Spain.
This is revealed by her sister, Isabel Chávarri, in Anatomía de, where she talks about the harassment that the socialite suffered throughout that “golden” decade for the paparazzi, who did everything possible to get a snapshot of Marta Chávarri, one of the characters whose images were better paid.
“Marta was very funny, very fun… She was very easy,” Isabel recalls. When asked if Marta would have been aware of having been used by these powerful men in this business battle, her sister responded affirmatively and without hesitation.
“Yes. I think that at that moment you don’t realize it, but as the years go by and you put things in their place,” he explains.
“I took sleeping pills, to relax. It was living with my heart out,” confesses Isabel Chávarri, who does not reveal her current face during the program, since the youngest of the sisters has never been a public figure. “Once, she even left in a trunk. She was going 120 per hour through Madrid with cars following you without knowing if you were going to crash, without knowing what was happening… It had to be horrible,” she laments.
“The harassment against Marta Chávarri was savage, I compare her to Lady Di: 24-hour surveillance, persecutions, monitoring of parties…”, says Bianchi, who explains that the socialite had to “change her entire life for fear of the media”. The photographers of the time “did atrocious things for an image,” adds the journalist.
An opinion shared by photographer Lázaro “Lalo” Álvarez: “The press usually takes a character who is doing well and shoots him like a rocket, but they just throw him in the trash. No one thought of Marta Chávarri.”
