Cecilia Attias
Cécilia Attias (born Cécilia María Sara Isabel Ciganer-Albéniz; Boulogne-Billancourt, November 12, 1957) was the second wife of French President Nicolas Sarkozy until October from 2007.
Biography
Cecilia Attias was born in Boulogne-Billancourt, France on November 12, 1957 as Cécilia María Sara Isabel Ciganer-Albéniz. Her father, André Ciganer, was a Moldovan immigrant born in Bălți, Bessarabia in 1898 of Russo-Jewish lineage. Her father left home at the age of 13, just before World War I. Ciganer moved to Paris, where he became a furrier. In 1937 he converted to Catholicism and married the Spanish-Belgian Diane Albéniz de Swert, daughter of Alfonso Albéniz Jordana, a Spanish diplomat who played for Real Madrid at the beginning of the 20th century and a Belgian mother. She has three older brothers. Her maternal great-grandfather was the Spanish composer Isaac Albéniz.
Her mother's half-brothers and half-sisters, as well as their descendants, belong to a family of Antwerp nobility: the Le Grelle family. Her maternal grandmother, Rosalie de Sweert (1901–1982), married Count Adelin Le Grelle in 1921 in Valencia, Spain. From this union two children were born, Count Richard Le Grelle and Countess Marie Antoinette Le Grelle, who had four children with the Canadian ambassador, Keith MacLellan.
Born with a heart defect, she suffered heart problems that stunted her growth. She underwent open heart surgery when she was 13 years old and it quickly compensated for her stunted growth.
She studied piano and earned a B, after studying for 13 years at a French religious institution, Sœurs de Lübeck. She enrolled at the Panthéon-Assas University to study law, but she dropped out and became a parliamentary assistant to René Touzet. She was also a proper model for Schiaparelli, the French fashion house, and worked for a public relations firm.
Personal life
Cécilia Ciganer-Albéniz moved in with popular French television presenter Jacques Martin in 1983. They married on August 10, 1984. The wedding took place in Neuilly-sur-Seine at the town hall, and Nicolas Sarkozy, then mayor de Neuilly, officiated the wedding. The Martins had two daughters, Judith Martin, born August 22, 1984, and Jeanne-Marie Martin, born June 8, 1987. They have a grandson, Augustin, and a granddaughter, Diane Elizabeth, the children of their daughter Jeanne- Marie. Cécilia Martin left her husband to live with Sarkozy in 1988 and obtained a divorce three months later.
In 1987, Nicolas Sarkozy, who at the time was married to his first wife, met Cécilia Martin again and has said he felt "struck by lightning." After Sarkozy himself obtained a divorce in 1996, they were married in Neuilly-sur-Seine on October 23, 1996. Witnesses to the wedding were billionaire businessman Bernard Arnault and Martin Bouygues. Six months later, on April 23, 1997, Cécilia Sarkozy gave birth to the couple's only child, Louis. Nicolas Sarkozy had two children from his first marriage.
Nicolas Sarkozy once declared that Cécilia Sarkozy was his "strength and his Achilles heel". Nicolas Sarkozy wrote in his 2005 book Testimony: "Today, Cécilia and I are reunited forever, forever, without a doubt forever... We cannot nor do we know how to separate ourselves". He has said that his wife is his "true soul mate"; 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 concern is Cécilia."
Rumours had circulated since Sarkozy's election as president in May 2007 that the couple had separated, and further rumors emerged in the French media in October 2007 that they were expected to announce their divorce plans soon. On October 18, 2007, the Élysée Palace issued a statement stating that the Sarkozys "announce their separation by mutual agreement." Soon after, the palace corrected the separation announcement stating that the Sarkozys had officially divorced.
On [[October 19]6, 2007, an interview with Cécilia Sarkozy was published on the front page of L'Est Républicain, a French regional newspaper. In it, she admitted that she had eloped with her lover, Richard Attias, in 2005 and that, although she eventually returned to Sarkozy, they were unable to repair her 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 of your life. It doesn't work anymore, it doesn't work anymore."
She married Richard Attias, CEO of The Experience, an event management company, on March 23, 2008, at Rockefeller Center in New York.
Political life
When her husband was a minister, Cécilia Sarkozy had an office next door to his, serving as his closest adviser. In 2002, she was appointed to the Office of the Ministry of the Interior. In 2005 she was appointed Chief of Staff of the UMP Party.
Cecilia Sarkozy visited Libya twice in July 2007 to visit Muammar Gaddafi and helped secure the release of five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor who had spent years on Libya's death row after allegedly being tortured into confessing to infecting Libyan babies with HIV. The French left called for Cécilia Sarkozy to be heard by the Parliamentary Commission that is expected to be created in October 2007 on the terms of the release of the six, as she had played an "important role" on his release according to Pierre Moscovici. The liberation process is described in the book Notes from Hell from the perspective of one of the doctors, Valya Cherveniashka.
Cécilia Attias Foundation for Women
In October 2008, Cécilia Attias announced the launch of the Cécilia Attias Foundation for Women, which "helps achieve concrete improvements in the lives of women around the world by providing a strategic, financial, networking and media outlets for established non-governmental organizations, social organizations, businesses and associations that champion the cause of equality and women's well-being.”