“That house has to be called the house of terror because it is a drama, a horrible thing”. This is how a former employee describes Julio Iglesias’ mansion in Punta Cana (Dominican Republic) in the investigation with which elDiario.es and Univision Noticias have revealed this Tuesday that two former employees accuse the singer of sexual assaults.
During three years of journalistic investigation and after speaking with 15 people who worked between the late 1990s and 2023 in the singer’s homes in the Dominican Republic, Bahamas and Spain, the Spanish digital media and the U.S. channel explain how these two women claim to have been assaulted in 2021 by Julio Iglesias, who is currently 82 years old.
The events – which include episodes of harassment, aggression and sexual violence, according to the victims’ accounts: a domestic employee and a physiotherapist – took place at Julio Iglesias’ residences in Punta Cana (Dominican Republic) and Lyford Cay (Bahamas) with the knowledge of the women in charge of managing the home and hiring the staff.
The article, signed by nine journalists from the two media outlets, states that the singer has not responded to any of the attempts to contact him or his legal representatives. Agencia EFE has also tried to obtain the version of Iglesias’ entourage without success.
The women have denounced Iglesias to the Public Prosecutor’s Office of the Audiencia Nacional, which has opened proceedings, still in a very preliminary stage and kept secret, to analyze it, prosecutors told EFE.
These facts, according to the complaint filed on January 5 and accessed by elDiario.es, “refer to events that took place in 2021 that could constitute human trafficking for the purpose of imposing forced labor and servitude along with ‘several crimes against sexual freedom and sexual indemnity such as sexual harassment and sexual assault’, as well as injuries and several crimes against workers’ rights ‘by the imposition of abusive working conditions’,” the Spanish digital media outlet points out.
Under Spanish law, Spanish courts have jurisdiction to investigate crimes committed outside the national territory, provided that the criminally responsible parties are Spanish nationals or foreigners who have subsequently acquired Spanish nationality.
Julio Iglesias and the serious accusations
This rule establishes the jurisdiction of the Audiencia Nacional for “crimes committed outside the national territory, when according to the laws or treaties it is incumbent upon the Spanish courts to prosecute them”.
After the allegations became known, the Spanish government has called for the investigation of the facts to be carried out “to the end” so that “no room for impunity” remains.
“We are not going to look the other way”, said today the spokesperson of the Executive and Minister of Inclusion, Social Security and Migration, Elma Saiz, at the press conference after the Council of Ministers and after confirming the veracity of the information published today by the digital newspaper eldiario.es and the television network Univisión Noticias in the United States.
The Spanish Minister of Equality, Ana Redondo, for her part, stressed in X that “in the face of machismo we cannot look the other way, because denial intensifies the problem” and hoped that “it will be investigated and brought to the end”.
“Without questioning the presumption of innocence, in Spain the law protects the victims. When there is no consent, there is aggression,” said Redondo, while the government spokeswoman said that, despite not having read the information in depth, the journalistic work deserves a lot of respect, reported Agencia EFE.
Find out more at ‘QueOnnda.com’.
