Controversy in Andorra over a millionaire debt of Borja Thyssen

BarcelonaBorja Thyssen has projected very different images throughout his extensive media life, which dates back to the day of his own birth. From being a shy and discreet child in the shadow of his iconic mother and adoptive father – Tita Cervera and Baron Heinrich von Thyssen-Bornemisza de Kászon et Impérfalva, respectively – he became a kind of pioneer of the reggaeton manmuscular and tattooed in his younger days to eventually, at 46 years old, become a low-profile figure who only appears in the media voluntarily for matters related to art collecting. This change of course in his public image, however, has been interrupted by a controversy with an Andorran bank that has spread to all the Spanish gossip media, as expected, in the midst of a news drought.

According to the Andorran media Loudspeaker, the son of the baroness Thyssen has a debt of approximately five million euros with MoraBanc, a sum significant enough for the entity to have gone to the courts of the Principality to claim this amount generated by an unpaid loan. The entity has not been able to recover the money and the lawsuit remains open because - also according to the aforementioned media - the difficulties in locating Thyssen would have harmed the agility of the process. In fact, the court would have finally decided to continue the proceedings without being able to locate him.

Borja's answer

Faced with this information, as expected, the "environment" of the baroness's son has made statements about it to the magazine ¡Hola!, the "Official Gazette" of celebrities. The magazine acknowledges the conflict with the banking entity and points out that it has been going on for some time, although without specifying since when. It also explains that the legal dispute is in the hands of the aristocrat's lawyers, who state that Borja is "absolutely always locatable". In fact, it is not at all strange that they refer specifically to this last point, as it is known that Borja Thyssen has resided for years in Andorra and not in Spain, and this must have been particularly striking in such a small state, where, from a fiscal point of view, it is so important to be able to prove that you are there.

Evidently, this debt, which would terrify anyone, doesn't even ruffle Thyssen's feathers. While the legal dispute continues because he disagrees with some aspects of the loan, various media outlets have reviewed the extremely important fortune he possesses, the result of the division of his father's inheritance between him and his four half-siblings, born from the baron's four marriages prior to that with Cervera. All of them signed the well-known Basel Pact in 2002. As a result of that agreement to divide the deceased's immense fortune, according to information from the time, Borja received no less than approximately 15 million euros in cash – duly managed – and movable and immovable assets that would multiply this initial figure many times over. Broadly speaking, the media currently mentions a villa in Gstaad (Switzerland), a new mansion in La Finca (Madrid), another property in Ibiza, another villa in Andorra that he allegedly sold to his mother, and a property in Dubai.

Tense relationship forever?

In fact, when Tita Cervera gave an interview a couple of years ago to the program Espejo público and explained that she had made changes to her millionaire will, it became known that her son Borja had begun to consider Dubai as a place to establish his residence with his wife, Blanca Cuesta, and their five children. That information, published in the magazine Semana, was not ultimately confirmed, but the acquisition of the property in the emirate did occur. Perhaps it was the prelude to a new distancing that ultimately did not materialize.

The relationship between the mother and son has been the subject of all sorts of speculation for years and years. The survival of the baroness's legacy, to whom some 1.5 billion euros – according to Forbes– would have corresponded from the inheritance of her late husband, has always been a cause for concern for her, as has the figure of her son as a hypothetical successor. But all this changed when, at 63 years old, Tita became a mother again through surrogacy. María Carmen and Guadalupe Sabina, who are now twenty years old, positioned themselves as an alternative to Borja in the future management of the baroness's legacy, so distant from her son that she has spent long periods without seeing her grandchildren and who, when he got married, did not even attend the wedding, celebrated in Terrassa in 2007, with Cuesta dressed in a beautiful Pronovias dress that did not hide her incipient pregnant belly. After several ups and downs, for now there is a certain consensus that the mother-son relationship seems to be stabilized.

Three decades of love

Borja's relationship with Blanca Cuesta, which the baroness disapproved of with her notable absence at the wedding, began in 1998, when he was only eighteen years old. The baroness's son and his girlfriend met in none other than Costa Brava, where Tita has always vacationed in her mansion Mas Mañanas, in Sant Feliu de Guíxols. Cuesta was then twenty-four years old and the infatuation was absolute, so much so that they have never been separated since. Despite all the media ups and downs they have had for all sorts of reasons and the pressures they have been subjected to, their relationship has always been one of the most solid in the Spanish celebrity scene.

Borja's banking controversy comes at a delicate moment for his family, as the baroness is currently recovering from pneumonia that caused much concern in the press in April of this year, shortly after she turned 83. The fact that her children, always distant from each other, and even Blanca Cuesta, went to the hospital simultaneously led to thoughts of the delicate situation she might be experiencing. Furthermore, afterwards they all stayed near her, in Sant Feliu, where she decided to face her recovery calmly and without making any public appearances. In fact, she even minimized the number of household staff to avoid leaks about her health status and to focus on her recovery without added problems.

Fortunately, the baroness's health has improved in recent months, according to her nephew, Guillermo Cervera, her right-hand man for many years. "[She will reappear] When she feels like it. She will decide that. I can't, but she is perfectly fine. She is now in a new phase for her, because she has always been so committed to everything she has done that she is discovering the feeling of enjoying other things that she had always put on the back burner," he said. Perhaps it means she is not worried about her son's alleged debt or the problems they have dragged on for so many years? It could be. But it could also be not. Interpreting the hints from one and another has long been a journalistic subgenre made in Spain.