Colombian pop star Shakira accused Spain’s tax office of confiscating all the income she earned when she lived there, comparing the institution to “the Inquisition” in a letter published Wednesday in Spanish daily El Mundo. The “Hips Don’t Lie” singer reached a settlement in 2023 to avoid a trial in Barcelona over alleged tax fraud. “The Spanish state kept more than all my income for those years,” she wrote in her letter to El Mundo.

“It may seem incomprehensible, but for me, the Spanish decade was a lost decade financially, and not because I worked little, as everyone knows,” she added. Shakira settled with prosecutors on the opening day of her trial in Barcelona in November 2023 over charges she had defrauded tax authorities of 14.5 million euros ($16 million) earned between 2012 and 2014. As part of the deal, she accepted the charges in exchange for paying a fine of nearly 7.8 million euros to avoid serving time in jail.

At the time she explained she had settled “with the best interest of my kids at heart”. She needed “to move past the stress and emotional toll of the last several years” and focus on her career, she said. In May 2024 a Spanish court said it had shelved a second probe into alleged tax fraud by Shakira concerning her 2018 income tax return, ending her legal problems in Spain. Shakira now lives in Miami with her two sons after splitting from star footballer Gerard Pique, who at the time played for Barcelona.

A public ‘burning’

In her letter to El Mundo, she accused Spain’s tax office of being more interested in “burning her in public” than listening to her arguments. “You don’t solve things by burning people at the stake like in an Inquisition trial,” the 47-year-old added. As she had argued to the court, the singer once again denied that she lived in Spain for more than 183 days a year between 2012 and 2014, the threshold above which a person is considered a taxable resident.

Spain’s tax office went through her social media posts to gather evidence that she had in fact been in Spain for over 183 days per year. Its lawyers summoned dozens of witnesses, including her hairdresser and neighbors to back their case. Spain has in recent years cracked down on celebrities such as Argentine football star Lionel Messi and Portugal’s Cristiano Ronaldo, for unpaid taxes. Both players were convicted of evasion and received prison sentences that were waived for first-time offenders. — AFP