Julio Iglesias has lost a three-decade-long paternity dispute as a Spanish court today ruled that he did father a son with a Portuguese dancer.
Maria Edite has been trying to prove that her 43-year-old son Javier Sanchez-Santos is the child of the the 75-year-old Grammy award-winning singer who she had an affair with in 1975.
Iglesias has always refused to take a DNA test, but a judge declared that Edite provided credible details of the relationship and pointed to the the physical resemblance between the two men.
Julio Iglesias (left) has lost a three-decade-long paternity dispute as a Spanish court today ruled that he is the father of Javier Sanchez-Santos (right)
Maria Edite (left) has been trying to prove that her 43-year-old son is the child of the the 75-year-old Grammy award-winning singer who she had an affair with in 1975
A Valencia court today issued a statement ruling that the judge ‘declares that Julio Iglesias is his [Sanchez’s] biological father’.
Iglesias now has 20 working days to appeal the court ruling.
At a hearing last week, Sanchez’s attorneys – who brought the initial lawsuit – said that the ‘great physical resemblance between father and son’ is a clue towards their client’s true parentage.
In addition, they said it has been proved by DNA that he is not the son of Edite’s then husband, whose name was Sanchez.
Iglesias – also father of music superstar Enrique – has sold more than 300 million records in 14 languages, making him the best-selling Latin artist ever.
Maria Edite (left), Javier Sanchez (right) and his girlfriend Chiara (right) arrive at the court in Valencia last week
Maria Edite (pictured in her youth), a Portuguese former dancer, claims that she had an affair with Iglesias in the 1970s
He turned to singing after a car accident in 1963 that ended his burgeoning career as a soccer player.
He has eight other children. Three were born out of his marriage to Isabel Preysler and five with his wife Miranda Rijnsburger.
Leaving the courtroom last week, a smiling Edite called on Iglesias to have the DNA test and acknowledge ‘a wonderful son I am very proud of’.
If Iglesias disputes the ruling, the case could be sent to the European Court of Human Rights.
Sanchez won a court ruling in his favour as long ago as 1992, declaring that Iglesias was his biological father.
Iglesias – also father of music superstar Enrique – has sold more than 300 million records in 14 languages, making him the best-selling Latin artist ever
But that ruling was later overturned, and Iglesias’s lawyers argue that the case cannot be examined again.
Iglesias is known for his romantic ballads and a prolific love life that has long grabbed headlines.
Iglesias has often presented himself as an unapologetic flirt with ‘an obsession for sex’.
‘Don’t ask me how many brothers I have, I don’t even know myself,’ his son Julio Jr said in 2018 on television.