The death of Marta Chávarri at the age of 62 continues to shock Spanish society this Friday morning. The one who was at the time Marquise de Cubas, has been found lifeless this morning at her home in Madrid. Alberto Cortina’s ex-wife, his social events and philanthropic activities will be remembered at a time when figures like his were viewed in a special way. However, his image was tarnished by a complex financial web.
As the newspaper El Mundo explained in 2019, Cortina was blackmailed so that some photographs of Chávarri would not be published in the magazine Interviú. In them, the marquise appeared without underwear while she was having a drink in a local. Said blackmail occurred with the aim of preventing one of the most important bank mergers of that time from breaking down: that of Banesto and the Central Bank. A story in which ONCE was involved as the eye of the hurricane.
The Spanish National Organization for the Blind was in a period of expansion at the end of the 1980s. Under the leadership of its then president, Miguel Durán, ONCE began a series of strategic investments in different important sectors, such as finance, industry, services, real estate, and communication. It was the first of these that led to the scandal of the Interviú photographs.
In February 1989, Antonio Asensio, at that time president of Grupo Zeta, met with Cortina to make him a proposal. He had the images of Chávarri without underwear, and in exchange for not publishing them they wanted him to do them a favor: back out of the merger of Banesto and Banco Central, in which ONCE also had a prominent role. Durán’s organization had just acquired 1% of Banco Bilbao Vizcaya (BBV), and had also agreed to enter into this merger.
The photographs would end up being published on February 14, 1989, in one of the most scandalous and curious moments in the history of the heart in Spain. The magazine’s circulation put a stop to what would have been one of the largest economic mergers in the country at that time, something that did not stop ONCE from continuing its investment fever. For his part, Cortina would end up marrying Marta Chávarri two years later, in 1991.
The loss of the Marquise de Cubas has been a severe blow to different social circles in the territory. One of them is that of her political niece, Tamara Falcó. The latest information suggests that the Marquise de Griñón could paralyze her honeymoon with Íñigo Onieva to attend Chávarri’s funeral and support her cousin, Álvaro Falcó, son of the deceased.
