Julio Iglesias’ defense team has taken a step forward in its strategy against the sexual assault complaint filed by two of his former employees. Iglesias has chosen to publish a series of WhatsApp messages, allegedly sent by the complainants, on his Instagram account, with the aim of demonstrating the “falsity” of the accusations.
According to the artist himself, this initiative is a response to what he considers a refusal by the Prosecutor’s Office to grant him “formal access” to the complaint, which, in his words, prevents him from properly “exercising” his defense, as reported by Europa Press. Although the singer published the conversations on his social media, identifying the women by name, this news outlet has chosen not to publish their identities.
The posts shared by Iglesias are intended to serve as documentary evidence for the public. In a statement released on Instagram prior to the screenshots, the singer argued that his decision to make these conversations public stems from the fact that, after the Prosecutor’s Office refused to release them, this is the “only means” that allows him to “legitimately exercise” his right to defense and document the events reported by the former employees.
Furthermore, Iglesias asserted that the evidence provided by the WhatsApp messages, sent while the complainants worked at his home and after their employment ended, demonstrates the falsity of the accusations. In this regard, he stated in his Instagram stories: “The WhatsApp messages sent by the complainants while they worked at my house and the messages after they left prove that the information being disseminated is untrue.”
In his message, Iglesias reiterated that “everything has its limits” and deemed it “necessary to expose these falsehoods and tell the truth.” The singer clarified that he only attached some of the conversations that, in his opinion, demonstrate the “inconsistency of the accusations and the media manipulation” to which he believes he is being subjected. The published messages span the years 2021, 2022, and 2023 and were released after midnight on Thursday, January 22, Spanish time.
Denial of access to the complaint and the singer’s legal actions
In parallel, Julio Iglesias’s defense team has formally requested that the National Court Prosecutor’s Office send them the complaint filed against him, given that the artist maintains it is “unusual” not to have a copy of it. According to a document obtained by Europa Press, the singer’s legal representation argues that it is paradoxical that Iglesias himself, the accused, is unaware of the complaint’s contents.
The request for access to the case file comes after the Public Prosecutor’s Office denied Iglesias’s request to be admitted as a party to the preliminary investigation, a step initiated by his lawyer. On Monday of this week, the singer’s defense team requested that the Public Prosecutor’s Office recognize them as a party to the proceedings and, simultaneously, asked for the case to be dismissed due to “the lack of Spanish jurisdiction to hear the case.”
Julio Iglesias himself had already spoken out last Friday on the same social media platform, where he described the accusations against him as “absolutely false” and revealed that they cause him “great sadness.” On that occasion, he stated: “I have never felt such malice.”
The allegations of former employees, an investigation by elDiario.es and Univision
The accusations stem from an investigation conducted by elDiario.es, in collaboration with Univision News, whose journalists spent three years examining the experiences of women who worked as domestic staff or professionally for the artist between 1990 and 2023.
According to the investigation, one of the former employees claims she was forced into non-consensual sexual encounters with Julio Iglesias, including penetration, slapping, and physical and verbal humiliation. The alleged abuse reportedly occurred in 2021, when the victim was 22 years old.
During the period analyzed, the investigative team contacted a total of 15 former employees, including domestic staff and other specialized professionals, who worked at the singer’s residences in the Dominican Republic, the Bahamas, and Spain. In the testimonies, the woman who reports the sexual assaults recounts that Iglesias, then 77 years old, summoned her to his room “many times at the end of the workday”.
Thus, in statements collected by elDiario.es and Univision News, she affirmed: “He used me almost every night.” Along the same lines, she added: “I felt like an object, like a slave.” Furthermore, the encounters were almost always attended by another employee, the alleged victim’s superior within the domestic staff organization. The news report details that the interviews conducted by elDiario.es and Univision News confirm aspects related to the “isolation of women,” internal labor conflicts, the hierarchical structure of the staff, and the “atmospheric tension generated by Iglesias’s irascible nature.”
The reported assaults allegedly took place at Julio Iglesias’s residences in Punta Cana (Dominican Republic) and Lyford Cay (Bahamas). According to the former employees’ testimony, these events occurred with the knowledge of those responsible for managing and hiring the domestic staff.
