Carmen Sevilla had two great loves with whom she married. In the first place, it was the Spanish composer Augusto Algueró who conquered her heart, but her marriage fell apart due to his infidelities. And the second was the movie theater businessman Vicente Patuel, whom Carmen accompanied until her death in the 2000s.
It was with Patuel that Carmen discovered happiness. “With Vicente I learned what love is,” she recounted years later. But despite this, they were years of mixed feelings for Carmen, since marrying the businessman meant separating her from show business. As she herself acknowledged in an interview with Isabel Gemio: “I’m not going back to the movies because Patuel won’t let me. For now, no. I’m very calm and very comfortable, thank God.”
They say that it was by the will of her husband, that he was the one who prohibited her from working and isolated her on a farm in Badajoz for almost 20 years. That caused enormous loneliness and sadness in the artist who saw how the last years of her life would be spent away from the spotlight without it being her will. “I spent many lonely moments, isolated in the countryside. She would close her eyes and ask me: ‘My God, will I be able to resist this? Will I be able to endure?'” She recounted years later.
It was a million-dollar contract to present the Telecupón that Patuel could not refuse, since the figure was too large to ignore. Then began the return of Carmen Sevilla to the small screen.
Despite this, Carmen Sevilla always showed her love for her second husband, elevating him to her true life partner: “30 years ago I married the person I have loved the most in my life. I have known what love is. It left me at a time that I will never ever forget and forgive me for being like that, but I can’t help it.”
His death in 2000, he suffered a heart attack at the age of 68, left Seville a widow and devastated. But that was what made her return to the capital and definitively relaunch her career on the small screen.
