The downfall of Julio Iglesias: How the world’s most famous Spaniard disappeared in his own Bermuda Triangle

“There comes a time in every man’s life when we have to choose, and I chose,” Julio Iglesias explained to EL PAÍS in June 1985. “Choose between what, Julio?” asked journalist Juan Cueto, who had traveled to the Caribbean to interview him. “Between a psychiatrist or the Bahamas,” Iglesias replied. The singer had just conquered the United States with his first English-language album, 1100 Bel Air Place, but he was feeling down. He had lost his voice at a concert in Frankfurt and had to undergo surgery. Instead of going to a psychiatrist, he took refuge on the Caribbean island of New Providence, in a colonial-style villa called Capricorn, where, in his words, he lived “almost like a hermit.”

Four decades later, Julio Iglesias, 82, continues to hide in his own personal Bermuda Triangle, an imaginary polygon whose three vertices are his mansions in the Bahamas, the Dominican Republic, and the fortified island of Indian Creek, in Miami. The last known images of him were taken in the summer of 2020 at his home in Punta Cana. In them, he appeared to have mobility issues, descending to his private beach with the assistance of three women in bikinis. There, at that Dominican property — a complex of bungalows with colonial-style walls of fine wood and thatched roofs — he received news this week that two former employees have filed a complaint against him with the Attorney General’s Office of the National Court of Spain for sexual assault, sexual harassment, and human trafficking, among other crimes, after an investigation by elDiario.es and Univisión revealed the alleged atmosphere of control, harassment, and constant intimidation that existed in the artist’s Caribbean homes. According to the complaint, the events allegedly took place between January and October 2021. The younger of the two complainants, who worked as live-in domestic workers, was 22 years old at the time.

The Prosecutor’s Office has not yet made a decision on its jurisdiction in this case, but Women’s Link Worldwide, the international human rights organization for women and girls that has supported the former employees in filing the complaint, confirmed this week that the public prosecutor has decided to take statements from the two women as protected witnesses.

Last Friday, 72 hours after the allegations surfaced, Iglesias shared a statement on his social media denying everything. The artist has entrusted his defense to lawyer José Antonio Choclán and has instructed his family to remain silent and not to visit him. He wants discretion, but in recent days the veil that concealed his private life has begun to lift. According to the gossip press, his marriage to Miranda Rijnsburger, his second wife and the mother of five of his children, has been “virtual” and “long-distance” for years. However, Rijnsburger commented on her husband’s statement on Instagram with: “Always by your side.”

“Julio has never lived with his family, never. He has always lived alone, with secretaries,” says journalist Jaime Peñafiel, a friend of the singer, in a conversation with EL PAÍS. When Iglesias’s three children with Isabel Preysler moved to Miami to live with him in 1984, they didn’t settle in the Indian Creek mansion, but rather in the home of the artist’s former manager, Alfredo Fraile, in Bay Point. Now, according to gossip magazines, none of the five children he had with Rijnsburger are living with him.

Loneliness is one of his leitmotifs. According to Hans Laguna, author of the book Hey! Julio Iglesias Y La Conquista De América (Hey! Julio Iglesias and the Conquest of America, Contra, 2022), this self-imposed isolation is neither new nor accidental. “It began when he went to the Bahamas in 1985, and it’s intentional,” the sociologist explained to this newspaper. “He has always played the role of a solitary man. He has cultivated that image and played with it throughout his career.”

In 1978, when he landed in Miami and signed a multimillion-dollar record deal with CBS International, Iglesias hired Rogers & Cowan, Hollywood’s most prestigious public relations agency. The firm represented aging stars like Elizabeth Taylor, Rita Hayworth, Bette Davis, Frank Sinatra, John Wayne, Cary Grant, and Kirk Douglas. “Julio arrived in the United States trying to absorb all the connotations of those stars from the golden age of cinema,” Laguna points out. That included an image of aloofness and mystery, an appearance of being unattainable.

In the end, the persona consumed the person. Now his life resembles that of Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard: a former entertainment icon who spends her days secluded in her mansion, detached from reality, accompanied only by subservient servants. Although Laguna prefers to compare the artist’s life to Fedora, another Billy Wilder film, in which a retired star hides away on a Greek island to avoid being seen.

Overseas “Sultanates”

In Iglesias’s life in the Caribbean, as in Fedora’s on the island of Corfu, housekeepers play a significant role. The complaint filed by the singer’s former employees identifies him as the main perpetrator of the alleged crimes, but also includes two women in charge of the mansions as accomplices. These two women allegedly collaborated with the music star to recruit and select employees and impose the conditions under which they had to perform their work. According to the journalistic investigation, the higher-ranking employees were instrumental in subjecting those at the lower end of the ladder to episodes of sexual violence, physical and verbal abuse, and humiliation at the mansions in Punta Cana (Dominican Republic) and Lyford Cay (Bahamas), episodes that included, for example, testing for sexually transmitted diseases.

Hans Laguna was surprised by the accusations, but acknowledges that there have been indications for many years that Iglesias might have “problematic behavior.” “Throughout his career, there were testimonies from his former manager, ex-partners, and former employees. But the media always softened all of that. It was part of the appeal. He was viewed with affection, admiration, sympathy, and humor,” he notes.

In 1986, Antonio del Valle, a former employee of the artist, published Julio Iglesias: ¿Truhan o señor? Secretos íntimos desvelados por su mayordomo (Julio Iglesias: Scoundrel or Gentleman? Intimate Secrets Revealed by His Butler), a memoir in which he recounted his four years living with the star. Del Valle described an “environment of primitive male chauvinism and blatant promiscuity” in which Iglesias treated women as if they were “hunted and subdued beasts.” The butler called his former boss an “erotomaniac” and a “predator of women” and described his houses as “sultanates.”

In 2010, actress Vaitiare Hirshon, who began a relationship with the artist in the 1980s when she was 17 and he was almost 40, also published her memoirs. In Rag Doll (Ediciones B, 2010), Vaitiare portrays him as a chauvinistic and jealous man who exerted an almost pathological control over her. Iglesias made no public comments nor took legal action. It wasn’t necessary. “Those two books, Vaitiare’s and the butler’s, were discredited by the media with the argument that the authors were scorned people, opportunists. Their testimonies weren’t given any credibility,” Laguna recalls.

Last year, Ignacio Peyró published El español que enamoró al mundo. Una vida de Julio Iglesias (The Spaniard Who Enchanted the World: A Biography of Julio Iglesias, Libros del Asteroide). The writer summarizes the star’s private life in the 1980s as follows: “Sex, according to the recollections of the household staff, ‘was readily available and accessible to everyone, like beluga caviar,’ and one simply ‘helped oneself.’”

‘Papuchi’

Maruja Torres followed Iglesias around the United States for a month in the summer of 1984. Her mission was to write a book about how the Spaniard was conquering America. “It was the Los Angeles Olympics and Julio was triumphing with 1100 Bel Air Place,” the journalist recalls in a conversation with EL PAÍS. “You can’t imagine the number of concerts I had to endure with his father [Julio Iglesias Puga, known as Papuchi] next to me, touching my knee and saying, ‘Look, Maruja, look at my son, isn’t he wonderful?’”

In the end, Torres wrote a novel, a satire titled ¡Oh, es Él! Viaje fantástico hacia Julio Iglesias (Oh, It’s Him! A Fantastic Journey into Julio Iglesias, Planeta, 1986). “I made up a story, but much of what I recount is true. Julio was disgusting, always with one or two blondes. I saw him humiliate the people who worked for him, starting with his manager, Alfredo Fraile,” she explains. “I endured it as long as I could, smiling like an idiot, and when I left, I wrote the book. When it was published, I heard rumors that he wanted to sue me. He didn’t.”

The renowned photographer César Lucas worked with Iglesias until he moved to the United States. The last time he saw him was in 1982. “Back then, he was very respectful and affectionate with his staff. He was very demanding, but very affectionate with everyone who worked with him. That’s all I know. What’s being said now doesn’t match the Julio I knew. Now, it’s another thing entirely how he’s changed as he’s gotten older,” Lucas tells EL PAÍS.

Distant star

After his triumph in the United States, the star became increasingly detached and gradually distanced himself from many of the collaborators who had brought him success, including Fraile, his manager and right-hand man. Over the years, he has begun spending less time singing in theaters and stadiums and more time in his retreats: impregnable, colonial-style houses with heavy security. They aren’t mansions; they are fortified complexes surrounded by private beaches and lush vegetation. They are islands within islands. “The fact that he likes those kinds of places says a lot; it’s part of the Western dream, that dream of the white man who thinks that everything there is mulatto women and palm trees,” reflects Maruja Torres.

In 2011, the singer announced his retirement from public life, but not from the stage. His last studio albums were released in 2015 and 2017. Since then, he has barely left his Bermuda Triangle, living between countries where a significant portion of the local population is vulnerable and suffers from precarious employment, while wealthy locals and foreigners enjoy enormous privileges and tax advantages. The Dominican Republic has a more favorable tax system than Spain, while the Bahamas was considered a tax haven by the European Union until 2024.

The last time Julio Iglesias spoke to the media was in April 2025. He did so in ¡Hola!, his trusted magazine. Once again, he addressed one of his favorite topics: his seclusion. “I have chosen this life. I live wonderfully with solitude,” he declared. The most famous Spaniard in the world has always said that he is happy living in the Caribbean, far from everything and everyone. For at least two of his employees, that paradise was a hell.

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