Marcela Gracia Ibeas and Elisa Sánchez Loriga
In 1901, a young man and his bride stood before a priest in a Catholic church in Galicia, northern Spain, to be wed. So far, so normal. However, in a twist that would scandalize the deeply conservative Spanish society of the time, it turned out that, while the bride was indeed a young lady by the name of Marcela Gracia Ibeas, the groom ‘Mario’ was in fact Elisa Sanchez Loriga.
The wedding was far from an impulsive affair. The duo had been dating for years, having first met in teacher training college. Before too long, Marcela’s mother found out and sent her daughter to Madrid to put an end to the affair for good. However, upon qualifying as teachers, the pair managed to get jobs in schools close to one another. The relationship was back on, and now they wanted to find a way to get hitched.
The plan was simple enough. Marcela would return home and announce she was engaged to be wed to Mario, a cousin from London. And it looked like the plan would work. Mario was baptized into the Catholic faith and the wedding went ahead, with the happy couple even posing for photos after the ceremony. But, sadly for the newlyweds, a local journalist soon got wind that something was up. The story, revealing the truth, was soon published, and the pair became infamous right across Spain.
So great was the scandal they caused that Marcela and Elisa were forced to flee to neighboring Portugal. But even here, they feared they would be arrested, so they booked tickets on a boat to Argentina. But not just two tickets. Marcela walked down the aisle while pregnant with an unknown man’s baby. The infant was born in Porto and joined the duo in their transatlantic crossing. Sadly, that’s where the story ends, with historians unable to determine what happened to Spain’s illicit lovers.