The hospital ward in Madrid smelled of antiseptic and silence. Julio José Iglesias de la Cueva, twenty years old, lay immobilized with a shattered lower spine after a car accident in 1963. Doctors said he would never walk again. A nurse named Eladio Magdaleno handed him a guitar to keep his hands moving during the two years of recovery. That instrument, meant as physical therapy, unlocked something the young law student and Real Madrid youth goalkeeper had never suspected about himself.
From football to Benidorm
Before the crash, Iglesias had been chasing football glory, playing for Plus Ultra between 1960 and 1964 while studying law at CEU San Pablo. The accident erased that future completely. Instead, he spent three months at the Bell Educational Trust language school in Cambridge after rehabilitation, then returned to Spain with a different kind of ambition. In 1968, he entered the Benidorm Song Festival and won with "La vida sigue igual," a title that translated as "Life Goes On" — a phrase that must have felt uncomfortably literal.
Columbia Records' Spanish division signed him immediately after Benidorm. His debut album "Yo Canto" spent 15 weeks in Spanish charts, climbing to number 3. By 1970, he was representing Spain at Eurovision in Amsterdam with "Gwendolyne," finishing fourth. The real breakthrough came with "Un canto a Galicia," sung in Galician, which hit number 1 across Europe and moved a million copies in Germany alone. Collectors hunting early Spanish pressings know these records as the foundation of an unprecedented catalog.
Polyglot hits and family life
The 1970s turned Iglesias into a polyglot hit machine. He released "Soy" in 1973, "A flor de piel" in 1974, and "El amor" in 1975. That same year, he cracked Italy with "Se mi lasci non vale," recorded in Italian. His French repertoire included "Je n'ai pas changé." Meanwhile, his personal life shifted: he married Filipina television host Isabel Preysler on January 29, 1971, and they had three children — Chabeli, Julio Jr., and Enrique — before divorcing in 1979.
In 1979, Iglesias moved to Miami and signed with CBS International. The move reshaped his sound and his market. "De niña a mujer" from 1981 featured his daughter Chabeli on the cover, a gesture that humanized the increasingly global star. His cover of "Begin the Beguine" became his first English-language hit, reaching number 1 in the United Kingdom. The compilation "Julio" arrived in 1983, setting up the crossover that would define the next decade.
"1100 Bel Air Place" in 1984 was the explosion. The album sold over three million copies in the US and made him a fixture on English-language radio. "To All the Girls I've Loved Before," a duet with Willie Nelson, topped the country chart and reached the top 5 on the Billboard Hot 100. Another duet, "All of You" with Diana Ross, landed in the top 20. The Beach Boys contributed vocals to his version of "The Air That I Breathe." The album remains a cornerstone for collectors of 1980s crossover pop.
Grammy wins and duets
The hits kept coming through the late 1980s and 1990s. In 1988, Iglesias won a Grammy for Best Latin Pop Album for "Un hombre solo" and recorded "My Love" with Stevie Wonder for "Non Stop." He appeared on "The Golden Girls" in 1989 as Sophia's love interest. In 1993, he sang "Summer Wind" with Frank Sinatra. The 1994 album "Crazy" paired him with Dolly Parton, Sting, and Art Garfunkel. Each collaboration expanded his reach into markets where Spanish-language pop had never penetrated.
By the 2000s, Iglesias was an institution. "Divorcio" in 2003 sold 350,000 copies in Spain on its first day and topped charts in Spain, Portugal, France, Italy, and Russia. The ten-month world tour that followed covered Europe, Asia, the Americas, and Africa. Guinness recognized him as the best-selling male Latin music artist in 2013, and he received an honorary doctorate from Berklee College of Music in 2015. Total sales exceeded 300 million records across 14 languages.
The later years brought turbulence. A Valencia court declared him the father of Javier Sanchez in 2019 based on a DNA test obtained from a water bottle left by his son on a Miami beach; Spain's Supreme Court rejected the claim in 2021. In January 2026, two former employees accused him of sexual harassment, allegations he denied. Spanish prosecutors closed the case on January 23, citing lack of jurisdiction since the alleged incidents occurred in the Dominican Republic and the Bahamas.
He turns 83 on September 23, 2026. Between 1968 and 1984, Julio Iglesias built the largest catalog of multilingual romantic pop ever assembled on vinyl — and the records from that stretch, from "Yo Canto" to "1100 Bel Air Place," are the ones that still surface in bins from Madrid to Miami.