| Cécilia Attias | |
| Born | Cécilia María Sara Isabel Ciganer-Albéniz November 12, 1957 Boulogne-Billancourt, France |
|---|---|
| Other names | Cécilia Sarkozy |
| Title | First Lady of French |
| Term | 16 May – 10 October 2007 |
| Predecessor | Bernadette Chirac |
| Successor | Carla Bruni (2008) |
| Spouse(s) | Jacques Martin (1984-1989) Nicolas Sarkozy (1996-2007) Richard Attias (2008-) |
| Children | Judith Martin (b.1984) Jeanne-Marie Martin (b.1987) Louis Sarkozy (b.1997) |
Cécilia Attias (born November 12 1957, Boulogne-Billancourt, France) was the second wife of French president Nicolas Sarkozy.
The Sarkozys started divorce proceedings on October 10, 2007[1] and eight days later, the Élysée Palace announced that the couple had separated. Later that day, the palace corrected that announcement by stating that the couple had officially divorced.[2]
The ex-wife of French President Nicolas Sarkozy married Richard Attias, an events planner, on March 23 2008, in New York's Rockefeller Center.[3]
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The former first lady of France was born Cécilia María Sara Isabel Ciganer-Albéniz. Her father, André Ciganer (né Aron Chouganov) was a Russian émigré believed to be of Jewish and Roma origin,[4][5] who was born in Bălţi, Moldova in 1898. He left home at the age of 13, just before the First World War.[6] Ciganer moved to Paris, where he became a furrier.[7] In 1937 he married Spanish-Belgian Teresita (a.k.a. Diane) Albéniz de Swert[6], a daughter of Alfonso Albéniz Jordana, a Spanish diplomat who played with Real Madrid in the early 1900s.[8][9] Her maternal great-grandfather was the Spanish composer Isaac Albéniz.[10]
Cécilia Sarkozy has three older brothers:
Born with a heart defect, she suffered from cardiac problems which hampered her growth. She underwent open cardiac surgery when she was 13, and she made up quickly for her growth delay. She stands 1.78 m (5' 10") tall.[13]
She studied piano (first prize in piano at Conservatoire), and obtained a baccalauréat B, after studying for 13 years in a French religious institution, Sœurs de Lübeck. She studied law in Assas. She went on to drop law school and became a parliamentary assistant to René Touzet.[14] She also was a fitting model for Schiaparelli, the French fashion house, and worked for a public-relations company.[6]
After cancelling her wedding to the photographer Jean-Daniel Lorieux, with whom she worked as an assistant,[15] Cécilia Ciganer-Albéniz moved in with the popular French TV host Jacques Martin in 1983. They married on 10 August 1984.[6] The bride was 26 years old and nine months' pregnant; the groom was 52. Her wedding witness was a childhood friend, Conrada de la Brosse, the wife of publicity agent François de la Brosse. The wedding took place in Neuilly-sur-Seine at the town hall, and Nicolas Sarkozy, then the mayor of Neuilly, conducted the wedding. The Martins had two daughters, Judith Martin (b. August 22 1984) and Jeanne-Marie Martin (b. June 8 1987).
Nicolas Sarkozy, who was married to his first wife at the time, met his future wife again three years later and has said he felt "struck by lightning".[14] Other sources, however, state at Sarkozy fell in love with the bride on her wedding day. In any case, Cécilia Martin would leave her husband to live with Sarkozy in 1988 and obtained a divorce a year later. According to a lengthy profile published in American Vogue in December 2007, despite the fact that Sarkozy was still married, Cécilia insisted on being called Madame Sarkozy, though the hostesses of Neuilly reportedly referred to her as "the mayor's whore".[16]Once Sarkozy had himself obtained a divorce in 1996, they married in Neuilly on October 23 1996. The witnesses were Martin Bouygues and billionaire businessman Bernard Arnault. Six months later, on April 28 1997, Cécilia Sarkozy gave birth to the couple's only child, Louis. Nicolas Sarkozy has two sons from his first marriage.
In 2005, Cécilia Sarkozy embarked on a yearlong, public affair with Publicis executive Richard Attias and followed him to Cannes and New York City.[13][7] However, in early 2006, she returned to her husband, who, in the meantime, had a romantic relationship with Anne Fulda, a journalist at Le Figaro.[17] According to some reports, Nicolas Sarkozy had his friend, Arnaud Lagardère, the owner of Paris Match, fire the editor for publishing a front-page pictorial of Cécilia with her lover.[13] An authorized biography of Cécilia Sarkozy, written by the French journalist Valérie Domain, was removed from circulation after being published in 2005, its entire print run destroyed, after both Sarkozys declared that the book intruded too much into their private lives; Domain refashioned the material into a novel called "Between the Heart and Reason" and named the heroine Célia.[17]
As for the reasons behind the couple's sudden reconciliation at the time Sarkozy was campaigning to become president of France, an acquaintance was quoted as saying, "She went back to him because she didn't want his defeat blamed on her. She went right to the end. She doesn't love him, but she wanted to show him that she gave everything up for him."[18]
Nicolas Sarkozy once declared that his now-former wife was his "strength and [his] Achilles' heel".[19] Nicolas Sarkozy wrote in his 2005 book, Testimony, "Today, Cécilia and I are reunited for good, for real, doubtless for ever ... [W]e are not able and do not know how to separate from each other." He has said his wife is his "true soulmate" and "the person without whom nothing I do would be possible". In July 2007, he said, "At the end of the day, my only real worry is Cécilia."[20]
When her husband was a Minister, Cécilia Sarkozy had an office next to his, serving as his close adviser but without an official role, except in one instance.[14] In 2004 she was officially listed as technical adviser to her husband when he was Minister of Economy. Cécilia has no official function in UMP, but she had an office at the campaign headquarters of her husband in 2007.[21]
A censored article in JDD reported that she did not vote during the second round of the 2007 presidential elections.[22] Lagardère, who owned Paris Match and had previously fired an editor for going against Sarkozy's wishes and printing a previous story on Cécilia's affair in New York, stepped in to stop the story before it ran.[23] She did not accompany her husband when he cast his vote (although her two daughters accompanied Nicolas while he voted) or during the vote count, and she left for a two-week holiday in Florida directly before the election day.[13][14][24]
She missed the crucial two weeks of campaigning directly prior to the second round election for this holiday, even though then-French President Jacques Chirac's wife, Bernadette, campaigned at a rally for Nicolas.[14] According to rumor, she was only persuaded to attend Nicolas' inauguration on the urging of her two daughters and flew in from London for the occasion at the last minute, wearing a casual outfit that one friend called her "escape outfit."[21][23]
The then Mrs. Sarkozy made a brief appearance at the G8 summit in June 2007, and then left, citing an important appointment in Paris, which left her husband as the only head of state at the dinner without a spouse.[24] In August 2007, while visiting a resort in Wolfeboro, New Hampshire with her husband, she bowed out at the last minute from a casual scheduled lunch with George W. Bush and Laura Bush, saying that she and her children had throat illnesses. Curiously enough, she was seen shopping at a New Hampshire outlet mall later that day.[25]
Sarkozy received criticism for her use of an Élysée Palace credit card used for entertainment expenses. She handed back the card in July 2007[26] after René Dosière lodged a parliamentary question demanding to know whether the president's wife could make cash withdrawals.[27]
Cécilia Sarkozy visited Libya twice in July 2007 to visit Muammar al-Gaddafi and helped in securing the release of five Bulgarian nurses and one Palestinian doctor who had all spent years on Libya's death row after allegedly being tortured into confessing to infecting Libyan babies with the HIV virus.[28] The French left asked for Cécilia Sarkozy to be heard by the Parliamentary Commission expected to be created in October 2007 concerning the terms of the release of the six, as she had played an "important role" in their liberation according to Pierre Moscovici (PS).[29] Arnaud Montebourg (PS) had criticized her role, accusing her of having fast-tracked the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Bernard Kouchner, while Sarkozy himself praised his wife.[29]
However, David Martinon, the speaker of the Élysée, declared that such a hearing would be "anti-Constitutional"; but that Claude Guéant, general secretary of the Élysée, would respond to such a request. Pierre Moscovici (PS) criticized a "statute of president by extension".
In October 2007, several French, American, and British media outlets published rumors that the Sarkozys had separated and expected to announce their plans to divorce shortly.[30][31] A report in Time (16 October 2007) noted that Cécilia Sarkozy has often stayed at the hotel in Geneva, Switzerland, where Richard Attias lives.[32]
The Associated Press and CNN.com reported on October 18, 2007, that a divorce announcement was imminent. The New York Times reported that same day that the Élysée Palace had released a statement declaring that the Sarkozys “announce their separation by mutual consent.” Shortly afterwards, the palace corrected the separation announcement by stating that the Sarkozys had actually officially divorced.[33]
An Associated Press report published in The Washington Post on October 18, 2007, stated that the swiftness of the announcement "raised questions about how the couple could secure a divorce so quickly, which no one in the president's office would answer."[34]
On 19 October 2007, The Washington Post reported that the Sarkozys " apparently took advantage of a French law that allows quick divorces by mutual consent, and which consequently does not require public legal proceedings, political analysts said."[35]
On 19 October 2007, an interview with Cécilia Sarkozy was published on the front page of L'Est Républicain, a regional French newspaper. In it, she admitted that she had run away with her lover, Richard Attias, in 2005 ("I met someone, I fell in love, I left") and that though she eventually returned to Sarkozy, they were unable to repair their marriage. "What happened to me has happened to millions of people: one day you no longer have your place in the couple. The couple is no longer the essential thing of your life. It no longer functions; it no longer works."[36] At another time, she reportedly said the upsets in her personal life were actually simple: "When things don't work anymore, I take my kids in my arms and I leave".[37]
In the December 2007 issue of American Vogue, the writer Joan Juliet Buck wrote, "In late October it was revealed that Cécilia had planned their divorce since April. Every public appearance of hers, it was revealed, had been an act."[38]
| Preceded by Bernadette Chirac |
First Lady of France 2007 |
Succeeded by Carla Bruni Sarkozy |