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The Spanish singer Julio Iglesias, who has been accused of sexually assaulting two female former employees, is also alleged to have ordered some women who worked for him to undergo tests for sexually transmitted diseases, local media have reported.
The sexual assault allegations against the 82-year-old singer, whose career spans six decades, were published on Tuesday after a three-year joint investigation by the Spanish news site elDiario.es and the Spanish-language TV network Univision Noticias.
Two women – a domestic worker and a physical therapist known by the pseudonyms Rebeca and Laura – allege they were subjected to sexual assaults while working at Iglesias’s Caribbean mansions in the Dominican Republic and the Bahamas in 2021.
They have filed a complaint against Iglesias at Spain’s highest criminal court, the Audiencia Nacional, accusing him of sexual assault and human trafficking. The allegations are the subject of a preliminary investigation by prosecutors at the court.
On Wednesday, elDiario.es published testimony from Rebeca and another former worker, Carolina, in which they alleged being required to have medical tests to check for sexually transmitted diseases such as HIV and chlamydia.
“He ordered the girls to go to the gynaecologist for a general examination,” said Rebeca. “There were 10 or 12 girls. They did everything to us there; the gynaecologist checked everything. It only happened to the girls.”
Carolina said: “I was tested for sexually transmitted diseases. They did ultrasounds and blood tests to see if we had any diseases. It didn’t seem normal to me.”
The women said they were then asked to send the results to one of Iglesias’s housekeepers. ElDiario.es also obtained medical documents apparently showing that five women employed at Iglesias’s villa in the Dominican Republic in 2021 underwent gynaecological examinations.
Rebeca has alleged that Iglesias, who was 77 at the time, would often call her to his room at the end of the working day. She said he would then penetrate her anally and vaginally with his fingers without her consent. “He used me almost every night,” she said. “I felt like an object, like a slave.”
Laura told elDiario.es and Univision Noticias that Iglesias had kissed her on the mouth and touched her breasts without her permission and against her will. “We were at the beach and he came up to me and touched my nipples,” she said, adding that a similar incident took place by the pool at the singer’s villa in Punta Cana, a luxury resort in the Dominican Republic.
Journalists from elDiario.es and Univision made repeated efforts to contact Iglesias and his lawyer through various channels but received no response to the questions sent by email, phone and letter. The Guardian has approached his representatives for comment.
In an interview published in elDiario.es on Wednesday, Laura said she and Rebeca had decided to file a complaint against Iglesias to encourage other women to come forward. “I think by taking legal action we’re sending a message to all the victims of this person – Julio Iglesias – so that they can speak out and believe in justice,” she said. “It’s so they can understand that this wasn’t something that just happened to them.”
The allegations have led some leftwing politicians to call for Iglesias to be stripped of the honours bestowed on him by Madrid’s city council and its regional government. Such calls have been dismissed by Isabel Díaz Ayuso, the outspoken rightwing president of the Madrid region.
“Women are being attacked and raped in Iran with the complicit silence of the far left,” she wrote in a message on X. “The region of Madrid will never contribute to the discrediting of artists and still less so when it comes to the most universal of all singers: Julio Iglesias.”
On Wednesday morning, Yolanda Díaz, Spain’s labour minister and a deputy prime minister, said the government was looking at withdrawing the Bellas Artes medal the culture ministry awarded Iglesias in 2010.
Díaz denied that such a move would affect the singer’s presumption of innocence, telling the Spanish TV programme La Hora de La 1 that there was a difference between “criminal responsibility” and “ethical responsibility”.
