Shakira waited for a year to tell her side of the story about her legal battle with the Spanish tax agency. But now that she has said her piece, she has decided to speak out. “This short article has more truth than everything that will be published about me in 2023,” she says at the end of a long letter published with her signature in the Spanish newspaper El Mundo.
The Colombian singer also maintained her innocence and said she admitted her guilt for her children in 2023, “not out of cowardice or guilt,” and made harsh accusations against the Spanish agency in charge of tax collection.
Shakira told a story that the public read through the newspapers and that began in 2011 when, accompanied by footballer Gerard Piqué, she visited Spain regularly. According to his story, he did not do so to settle in the country – as the Treasury later said – but rather with the aim of enriching his love affair.
The artist spoke of “gender bias” in his letter, saying, “If the singer were American, he would have fallen in love with a Spanish woman and visited her regularly. I find it hard to believe that the tax agency would have considered that he had the intention of settling down.
There is a structural masculinity that assumes that a woman can only follow a man, even when it is not convenient for her.” In January 2018, the tax agency filed a complaint against her, arguing that between 2012 and 2014 the singer lived in Spain and, therefore, had to pay taxes in the country on most of her income earned around the world.
The amount of the fraud alleged by the Treasury amounted to 14.5 million euros (about 15.6 million US dollars). In 2023, the artist reached an agreement that included admitting guilt before a judge and paying a fine of more than 7 million euros.
Shakira claims that the tax agency tried to create a “childish and moralistic” story that she avoided meeting her tax obligations. Shakira claims that she always fulfilled her obligations and that her financial affairs were also investigated by other international bodies, which never found any trace of illegality.
On the other hand, she accuses the director general of the investigative agency of accusing her in a television program before the trial. “Can we trust that an institution will respect our presumption of innocence when it publicly accuses us before we are sentenced?” she asks.
“Things are not solved by crucifying a public figure every year, as if it were an investigative trial to recover lost prestige.”
The singer explains that, during her stay in Spain, despite giving 120 concerts around the world, she did not earn any money, because the Spanish State kept her earnings in those years. “Today my assets include everything I earned before coming to Spain and what I earned after leaving Spain.”
Finally, the singer explains why she has decided to speak out now by publishing this post. “The first reason is my children,” she explains.
“I want to leave them the legacy of a woman who explained her reasons calmly and in her own time, when she thought it necessary, not when she was forced to do so. I need to tell them that the decisions I made were to protect them, to be with them and to move forward with my life.
Not out of cowardice or guilt,” she says. Shakira also said that she needed to make her statement to “get my life back, so that no one would write my story for me.” “I tell it to live,” the singer wrote, echoing the words of Colombian writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez, who titled his memoirs: “Living to Tell It.”
Shakira moved permanently to Miami following her breakup with Piqué in 2022, after a 12-year relationship, and has two children: Milan, born in 2013, and Sasha, born in 2015.
