Madrid:
Colombian superstar Shakira and FC Barcelona defender Gerard Pique announced on Saturday that they would be taking time off from their relationship of more than a decade.
The 45-year-old “Hips don’t Lie” singer is one of the biggest names in the global music industry and has sold more than 60 million albums.
Spanish football hero Pique, 35, won the 2010 World Cup and the 2012 European Championship, and is a three-time Champions League winner with Barcelona.
The couple have two sons and have lived together for years on the outskirts of Barcelona.
“We are sorry to confirm that we are breaking up. For the well-being of our children, who are our highest priority, we ask for respect for (our) privacy,” they said in a statement.
Blending Latin and Arabic rhythms and rock influences, three-time Grammy winner Shakira is one of Latin America’s biggest stars, scoring major worldwide hits with songs such as “Hips don’t Lie” and “Whenever, Wherever”.
In 2020, she performed with Jennifer Lopez on the halftime show of the NFL’s Super Bowl Championship Finals in Miami, typically one of the most-watched half-hours on U.S. television.
The couple announced their separation just over a week after Spanish court documents brought Shakira closer to a trial in Spain for tax fraud after a Barcelona court rejected an appeal from the singer.
Spanish prosecutors accuse her of defrauding the Spanish tax office for 14.5 million euros ($15.5 million) in revenue earned between 2012 and 2014.
They say she moved to Spain in 2011 when her relationship with Pique became public, but was an official tax resident of the Bahamas until 2015.
Her lawyers say she only moved to Spain full-time in 2015, claiming that her “tax conduct has always been impeccable in all the countries where she has had to pay taxes”.
In an interview with AFP in 2019, Shakira said that temporarily losing her voice two years earlier was “the darkest moment of her life” and had touched her “deeply”.
She later recovered her voice naturally, without undergoing surgery as recommended by doctors, and then went on a world tour in 2018.
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