Joshua Parfitt
WHITE-gloved waiters doted on a young Enrique Iglesias as he grew up among palm trees and two swimming pools in a €600,000 mansion just off Miami Beach, Florida.
Julio Iglesias’ second-born son was whisked away to a life of celebrity drop-ins and round-the-clock nannying following a speedy divorce from Enrique’s mother Isabel Preysler.
But not a cent of this was offered to a secret lovechild, Javier Sanchez, who was scandalously conceived just two months after Enrique’s birth in 1975.
A Valencia court ruled Javier was Iglesias’ third-born son last week, but the lifestyles of his doppelganger children could not be further apart.
While Enrique was being pampered in ultra-elite circles, Javier hung in a dingy restaurant near Valencia’s port where his mother Maria Edite scrubbed floors to make ends meet.
The former ballerina revealed to the Olive Press how an unexpected pregnancy forced her to shelve a career as a ballerina and raise her eldest child.
Feeding her family soon put a permanent end to former aspirations.
And while Spain’s most-successful singer went on to sell more than 250 million records worldwide, he has not stooped to sing even one note of ‘Happy Birthday’ to his 43-year-old son.
“When Julio and I met we were both stars,” she said from her home in the El Cabanyal district of Valencia.
“We were equal performers on stage when we met in July 1975 in the Las Vegas music hall, in Sant Feliu de Guixols, near Girona.
“But Julio destroyed my dreams. I should’ve known what I was doing, but it’s always the woman who has to pick up the pieces.”
Maria may be about to reclaim those pieces, however, after Valencia’s court 13 ruled that Javier will be entered into the Spanish registry as Julio Iglesias’ son.
“This means that Julio is obliged to take responsibility if Javier suffers illness or is in poverty,” Javier’s lawyer Fernando Osuna, told the Olive Press.
“It also means that Javier will have a claim to inheritance.”
He revealed that throughout two previous court cases, which first began in 1991, Julio has consistently refused a paternity test.
The white-toothed crooner also ignored an order to attend court last month.
This last legal action was only sparked after a private investigator pinched a bottle of water used by Julio Iglesias Jnr, while this eldest son was out surfing in Miami in May 2017.
DNA analysis proved that Javier and Julio Iglesias Jnr were brothers ‘with 99% accuracy’.
The judge eventually based the verdict on their joint-father’s refusal to agree to a test, and striking facial similarities.
Iglesias’s hotshot lawyers have 17 days to appeal the verdict, meanwhile Javier and Osuna are ploughing ahead with plans to sue for moral, psychological and spiritual damages.
“When Javier was 13, we tried to go backstage at a concert and introduce Julio to his son, but we were thrown out,” Maria added.
“What kind of man behaves like that? And not turning up to a court summons? What is that?”
“We’ve suffered so much. The press has called me every name under the sun.
“For Javier, his whole world has changed.
“But my victory is that I am exactly the same person, because I have always been telling the truth.”
