La traición (2008 TV series)

This romantic saga features Hugo de Medina, a handsome, mysterious swordsman, with a reputation as a womanizer. His life crashes around him when he finds he has catalepsy, an incurable condition marked by loss of voluntary motion. The same disease felled his father years before.

This dashing young man meets Soledad de Obregon, a gorgeous, refined girl and the two are bound together by sudden passion, though matters are complicated by Hugo's desire to hide his infirmity.^[3]

As the adoring couple prepares to marry, tragedy strikes again.^[4] Hugo's sinister brother, Alcides, who has always been in love with Soledad, betrays him and steals his betrothed. The rest of the telenovela deals with first Hugo's quest for vengeance and then his attempts to regain the trust and love of Soledad.^[5]

This telenovela was originally announced with Mario Cimarro, Sandra Echeverría and Gabriel Porras as stars.^[5] Danna García replaced Echeverría and Salvador del Solar replaced Porras, who took the male lead in Madre Luna. Telemundo began airing ads promoting this show in September, before filming began. It apparently shortened the series from the original plan of 130 to 106 episodes.^[1]

Telemundo also took a shot at rival network Univision by having Michelle Vieth appear in first-run episodes of this show, while Univision aired Al Diablo con los Guapos from 2007. This highlights that the competition rebroadcasts serials that already aired in Mexico several months ago, while Telemundo usually airs original programming. Michelle Vieth is thus one of the few soap performers to appear on competing US networks at the same time.^[6]