Julio Iglesias
Julio José Iglesias de la Cueva (Spanish: [ˈxuljo jˈɣlesjas]; born 23 September 1943) is a Spanish singer, songwriter and former professional footballer. Iglesias is recognized as the most commercially successful Spanish singer in the world and one of the top record sellers in music history, having sold more than 150 million records worldwide in 14 languages.[1] It is estimated that during his career he has performed in more than 5,000 concerts, for over 60 million people in five continents. In April 2013, Iglesias was inducted into the Latin Songwriters Hall of Fame.
This article is about the singer Julio Iglesias. For his father, see Julio Iglesias Puga. For his son, see Julio Iglesias Jr. For other uses, see Julio Iglesias (disambiguation).
Julio Iglesias
In 1983, Iglesias was celebrated as having recorded songs in the most languages in the world, and in 2013 for being the best-selling male Latin artist of all-time.[2] In April 2013 in Beijing, he was honoured as the most popular international artist in China. In Brazil, France, Italy and elsewhere, Iglesias is the most successful foreign record seller, while in his home country, Spain, he has sold the most records in history, with 23 million records.
During his career, Iglesias has won many awards in the music industry, including the Grammy, Latin Grammy, World Music Award, Billboard Music Award, American Music Award and Lo Nuestro Award. He has been awarded the Gold Medal for Merit in the Fine Arts of Spain and the Legion of Honour of France. UNICEF named him Special Ambassador for the Performing Arts in 1989. He has had a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame since 1985.
Early life[edit]
Iglesias was born in Madrid to Julio Iglesias Sr., a medical doctor from Ourense who became one of the youngest gynecologists in the country, and María del Rosario de la Cueva y Perignat. His paternal grandparents, Manuela Puga Noguerol and Ulpiano Iglesias Sarria, were of Galician ancestry.[3] His maternal grandparents were José de la Cueva y Orejuela (1887–1955)[4] and Dolores de Perignat y Ruiz de Benavides,[5] who was a native of Guayama, Puerto Rico.[6]
The name "Iglesias" translates as "churches". Iglesias says that he is of Jewish ancestry on his maternal side, and that his mother's family name, "de la Cueva", meaning literally "of the cave" and referring to Jewish people in hiding, is a common Jewish name.[7] He has proclaimed himself Jewish "from the waist up".[8]
He alternated playing professional football with studying law at the CEU San Pablo University in Madrid. In his youth, he was a goalkeeper for Real Madrid Castilla in the Segunda División. His professional football career was ruined when he was involved in a serious automobile accident in 1963 that left him unable to walk for two years.[9] The accident smashed his lower spine and left his legs permanently weakened and requiring therapy for several years. He has said of those years, "I had more courage and attitude than talent". While he was in hospital after the accident, a nurse named Eladio Magdaleno gave him a guitar so that he could recover the dexterity of his hands.[10] In learning to play, he discovered his musical talent.[11][12] After his rehabilitation, Iglesias studied for three months at Bell Educational Trust's Language School in Cambridge, England. After that, he returned to obtain his law degree at Complutense University of Madrid.[13]
Personal life[edit]
On 29 January 1971, Iglesias married Isabel Preysler, a Filipina television host. Preysler, a Filipina of Spanish ancestry, was also a member of the wealthy and aristocratic Pérez de Tagle family. The couple had three children: Chábeli (born 3 September 1971), a socialite; Julio Jr. (born 25 February 1973), a singer; and Enrique (born 8 May 1975), an internationally successful singer-songwriter, actor, and record producer. In the 1970s, Iglesias and his family were extensively depicted on the front pages of international newspapers and magazines. The marriage ended in divorce in 1979. The couple also applied for marriage annulment by the Catholic Church which was granted in 1980.[28]
Whenever Iglesias was not on tour, he spent his time at his Miami residence, purchased in 1978 for $650,000. The mansion on the private Indian Creek Island, whose interior design was made by Virginia Sipl, was placed on the market in 2006 for a quoted $28 million, making it one of the "Ten Most Expensive Homes in the South" in 2006 according to Forbes magazine.[29]
After his divorce, Iglesias lived with Dutch model Miranda Rijnsburger, 22 years his junior, whom he married on 26 August 2010 in a small church in Marbella, Spain. They had five children: Miguel Alejandro Iglesias (born 7 September 1997), Rodrigo Iglesias (born 3 April 1999), twins Cristina and Victoria Iglesias (born 1 May 2001), and Guillermo Iglesias (born 5 May 2007). They took up residence in the Dominican Republic, where Iglesias had acquired several hotel complexes, as well as the Punta Cana International Airport, which he acquired jointly with other investors, including fashion designer Oscar de la Renta.[9][30]
On 19 December 2005, Iglesias's father died of a heart attack at the age of 90. A week before his father's death, it became known that Ronna Keitt, his father's 42-year-old wife, was pregnant with their second child. Their first child, Jaime, had been born on 18 May 2004. The second child, Ruth, was born on 26 July 2006.
In 2008, after his house in Indian Creek did not sell at his asking price, he ordered it razed and said he planned to build another on the lot.[31] In 2012, he purchased the property next door for $15 million and announced that he planned to build a new home on the combined properties.[32][33] In 2020, he agreed to sell it to Jared Kushner and his wife Ivanka Trump, a daughter of then-U.S. President Donald Trump.[34]
In 2019, a court in Valencia ruled that Iglesias is the father of Javier Sánchez, son of Portuguese former dancer Maria Edite Santos. Sánchez had been pursuing his paternity suit in court since 1992, arguing that he was conceived when his mother allegedly had an affair with Iglesias in the Catalonia region in July 1975. The singer, who rejected all those claims, had refused on several occasions to undergo a paternity test. The Sánchez legal team argued that DNA evidence obtained in the US by an investigator proved their case; however, the DNA sample did not come directly from the singer but was collected from "a bottle of water" used by his son, Julio Iglesias Jr, which he left on a Miami beach. The presiding judge, José Miguel Bort, rejected this DNA claim but ruled in favor of Sánchez. Delivering the verdict, Judge Bort said his decision was reached in part because of the "resemblance between the two men" and on the basis of Edite's testimony.[35] Iglesias appealed the verdict and the Provincial Court of Valencia reversed Judge Bort's ruling, declaring it cannot be proven that Sánchez is the son of Iglesias. The matter was taken to the Supreme Court of the country, and, in April 2021, the Court dismissed the claims made by Sánchez, imposing also the costs of the process on him.[36]
