from his father Julio’s professional jealousy to his current luxurious life

It is said that this is when he started dreaming of becoming a singer. And while at the University of Miami, he began his double life: in the mornings he pursued his studies in business administration and in the evenings he cultivated his secret passion. In the Miami mansion Only one person knew of his musical inclinations: the family’s housekeeper, Elvira Olivares, La Seño.who in addition to raising him, kept his secret and gave him the $500 he needed to record a first demo without his father’s help. Apparently, Enrique sent the tape to Fonovisa, a record company then owned by Televisa, under the name Enrique Martínez, thus hiding that he was Julio’s son, he even invented that he was Guatemalan, and the department manager, seeing potential, signed him to a contract.

The singer dedicated his first album to his Lord, where his famous parents are not mentioned. Additionally, in those early years, he hated being introduced as “Julio Iglesias’ son” and was even said to have rejected a proposal from Julio to sing together. Perhaps it was inevitable that rumors began to circulate that Julio Iglesias was terribly jealous of his son’s unstoppable rise. Enrique, who became a teenage idol without giving a concertbroke records for radio and television interviews and sold more than five million copies worldwide of this first work (only between Mexico and the United States she shipped two million copies, a figure higher than what Julio had sold worldwide with his last album), which included the famous ballads SERVICIO Religious and Si tú te vas.

According to some biographers of the interpreter of Gwendolyne, the living singer who sold the most albums in the history of music with Madonna and Elton John, and the first non-Anglo-Saxon artist to have had great success in the United States, Julio was not at all happy that his son started his artistic career without telling him. “His son entered the singing world without seeking advice and without taking advantage of the many contacts he had in the industry, which hurt his ego.», comments Hans Laguna, author of the book Hey! Julio Iglesias and the conquest of America. “Plus, they were both very competitive. Enrique wanted to overcome the impact his father had made as a singer and Julio, for his part, was not amused that his son was having so much success while he himself was beginning to lose relevance.

At first, as Ignacio Peyró points out in his book The Spaniard Who Made the World Love, Julio was “skeptical” about his son’s chances of success (“Enrique sent the album to his father and he said it was rubbish, that it wouldn’t do any good,” a relative said on the subject). Until He even reminded him “that he sold records because he had the last name he had.”. On this subject, Enrique admitted that his relationship with his father was never easy. “At the age of 18, I completely separated myself from my family,” he confessed to Icon magazine. “And it was difficult. I left (to live in Canada) and for ten years I had absolutely no contact with my father. I only started having contact with him when my grandfather died (2005, when Enrique Iglesias was already 30 years old). It’s been many years. I suffered a lot. But what I felt about my music gave me strength. And above all, I aimed to do things my way.

It is common knowledge that when Enrique was young, his father lived totally devoted to his desire to succeed on the entire planet, as well as to his loves. Julio himself recognized that his intense schedule of professional, as well as romantic, commitments was incompatible with his obligations as a father. “Alfredo Fraile, her manager, said that Chabeli complained that the only times Julio met her and her brothers were photo shoots for ‘Hola!’ magazine,” Laguna said. “But time gave Julio a second chance to be a good father. Apparently, he managed to remove the thorn with the children he had with Miranda (Rijnsburger), his second wife, once his ambition as an artist and his exploits as a donjuán waned.

Enrique’s life was very different from his father’s. He also has numerous hits (including two number ones on the US sales chart), has undertaken several massive tours and won the most prestigious awards (in 1997 he won the Grammy for Best Latin Pop Artist). Of course In Spain, there has never been a shortage of mockery about his way of singing and criticism about the fact that he is the son of someone he is.. “That I had opportunities that other artists might not have had? Of course. But to some extent, people who say that I achieved everything thanks to my father seem ignorant to me. It’s impossible to succeed in this business if you don’t have songs that touch the audience. It’s impossible for someone to succeed because their father says, “I want my son to be a famous singer,” he once complained.

Today, at just 50 years old, he can afford to lead a peaceful life in Miami, where he lives in a 1,800 square meter mansion with former tennis player Anna Kournikova, his partner since 2001, mother of his three children (in August it was announced that they were expecting a fourth), whom he met during the filming of the music video Escape. At the end of 2023, he sold his entire music catalog and embarked on a lucrative tour of the United States and Canada with Pitbull and Ricky Martin.and last year came out Final (vol. 2), which he said would be his last work. Much less is known about his personal life and his current relationship with his family, as he is very jealous of his private life and rarely comments on himself.

Of course, no one has forgotten that Enrique did not attend the weddings of his sisters Ana Boyer and Tamara Falcó. Nor that his father Julio, retired from the stage and public life for some time, has still not gone to a concert of his son, with whom, at least until some time ago, he saw little and only spoke from time to time. Still, time helps heal emotional wounds and Enrique said in one of his last interviews with Spanish media that he and Julio respect each other, “more now than 25 years ago.” He is my father and I love him with all my soul.. “I respect and admire him and even understand some of the things he has done in his career and in his personal life.”