By most accounts the couple had grown apart and spent long stretches away from each other, but people close to the Murdochs did not expect the 82-year-old mogul to divorce his wife of 14 years.
The couple had grown up in the picturesque Catalonian village of Arbúcies, about 50 miles northeast of Barcelona, and were content in the small town nestled in the rugged hills of the Montseny mountains.
Although the couple have grown attached to the neighborhood, which borders a shopping street frequented by tourists and Neapolitans alike, they say the lack of an elevator and the apartment's limited space probably will prompt them to move eventually.
Ms. Mendes can't get much out of Alex's scripted impatience with Matt, but she gives her character a professional pride that explains why the couple have grown apart; he's still a boy in a man's body.
Over the years a couple have grown apart, saying: "All the money in the world won't buy a bed so big and wide to guarantee that you won't accidentally touch me in the night".
Because Ms Fernández's government, like that of her husband and predecessor, Néstor Kirchner, is unfriendly to foreign oil companies, its own oil and gas industry is steadily shrinking.Ms Fernández is deeply unpopular, thanks to rising inflation and evidence that the first couple have grown rich while in office.
However, sources claim that the couple have grown apart and remain together for business reasons.
But in recent years, as public acceptance of gay couples has grown, a national push for same-sex marriage has gained momentum, and it appears to have drawn its impetus not only from the gay rights advocates who organized it but also from the most grass-roots of levels: same-sex couples deciding they wanted, and would demand, the very same status as their straight counterparts.
The city ranking is a barometer of the changing demographics among the population of same sex couples, which has grown more diffuse throughout the country over the past 20 years.
Spacek and Wilkinson are outstanding, creating a married couple whose quiet, loving intimacy has grown over a couple of decades, but at the price of evading some troubling matters by burying them in work and domestic routine.
