Shakira (47 years old) published a letter in which he explodes like never before against the Spanish Tax Agency and explains why he reached an agreement with the institution. “I did it to protect my children, not out of cowardice,” explains the singer, creator of hits like Chancewho considers that “a sexist prejudice underlies the strategy of public administration”.
“In 2023, I lived surrounded by cameras waiting eagerly to show the world how broken I was. No one missed a detail: the Treasury trial, the media divorce… it was too juicy a spectacle to pass up.“with these words he justifies Shakira his tax dispute in a letter he published in the The world.
“But the most frustrating thing was seeing that a state institution seemed more interested in burning me publicly than listening to my reasons. Well, I think the time has come to give them,” added the singer, who He admitted in November 2023 before the Barcelona court to having defrauded 14.5 million euros between 2012 and 2014 and agreed to pay a fine of 7.8 million euros in exchange for a reduced sentence that would have spared him from going to prison.
[Shakira, libre de cuentas pendientes con la Justicia española: una juez archiva su última causa por fraude fiscal]
Shakira, upon her arrival at the trial held in Barcelona on November 20, 2023.
The Colombian artist considers that “an institution created to serve citizens should not use all its power and resources to capriciously criminalize whoever it pleases“But everyone knows that romance sells well,” he adds.
In the text, Shakira It goes back to the beginning of his relationship with then Barcelona player Gerard Piqué in 2011 to explain his continued trips to Spain. “Every time he came back, he did it so that the relationship could flourish, not because he wanted to stay. A strategy that also has an underlying sexist bias“, he assures.
If the singer had been an American, fallen in love with a Spanish woman and visited her regularly, “I find it hard to believe that The tax authorities reportedly considered that it intended to settle” adds the singer.
And she denounces the existence of “a structural machismo which takes for granted that a woman can only follow a man, even when it does not suit her.”A machismo that survives in certain sectors of the state bureaucracy in a society that, fortunately, already thinks very differently,” he adds.
Singer Shakira posing during a photocall.
The creator of Wolf considers that some technicians of the Spanish tax administration have presented a “children’s and moralistic story” in which she was a singer who avoided fulfilling her tax obligations and they were the representatives of justice and decency.
Furthermore, he believes that the Tax Agency It is not about punishing those who do not comply, but rather about displaying hunting trophies to rebuild a credibility in question.”I paid way more than I should have (…) If you add up all the amounts of what I have paid voluntarily and the unjustified fines, you will see that The Spanish State kept a sum greater than all my winnings of those years.
Statements of Shakira who come now because their conscience demands it and because they want to show their children that their decisions were “to protect them, to be at their side (…) Not out of cowardice or guilt“.
“I want you to understand that my love for Spain and my dear Spanish friends and family still exist, but not everything is the same,” acknowledged the singer, who believes that “Things aren’t solved by burning at the stake to a public figure per year as if it were an Inquisition process aimed at recovering lost prestige.”
