ANNOUNCER

The stories that only HOLA can tell. HOLA presents Julio Iglesias' podcast, from man to legend. In this episode we start as it should be started, from the beginning. When Julio, the lawyer soccer player became the Latin artist who has sold the most albums, in Spanish the most IM. We have listened to all his songs, we have interviewed him for five decades and we have witnessed very personal moments in his life. That has helped us to discover the man behind the most famous Latin artist of all time. He is Julio Iglesias and this is his story, a story that only HOLA can tell…

Episode One: "Life Stays the Same"

JULIO IGLESIAS

Life goes on the same… it's the only song that I think I wrote without knowing that people were going to listen to it. This was a story that came out of my gut. In the end, the works remain and the people leave. And I was dead, I mean, I had a very serious accident and that was a hallelujah song, a recovery song.

ANNOUNCER

This is the voice of Julio Iglesias and he is telling his own story to the microphones of ¡HOLA! TV, the Television Channel of ¡HOLA! Magazine, available in Latin America and the United States. It is a story that began during the summer of 1968 on the Spanish coast.

SOUNDS LIFE REMAINS THE SAME

"Some who are born others will die

Some who laugh others will cry

waters without channels rivers without sea

Pains and glories wars and peace...

ANNOUNCER

General Francisco Franco's regime had opted for sun and beach tourism and the streets of Benidorm were full of national and European tourists. On the night of July 18, the grand finale of the International Song Festival was held. The Plaza de Toros had opened its doors and 10,000 spectators listened one by one to the songs that had passed the censorship filter. On that night, warm and humid, typical of the Mediterranean, in ninth place an unknown Julio Iglesias came on stage. He was 24 years old, quite thin, with a slight shuffle when he walked and dressed in a spotless white tailored suit that was highlighted by a very intense tan, perhaps that was already his most striking feature, along with a very careful smile.

Julio was willing to sing a song he had written himself while recovering from a car accident. At first it was going to be sung by another artist: one with more options to win. When he approached the microphone, his movements gave him away, he was nervous and he hid his hands in his pockets.

LIFE REMAINS THE SAME: SECOND VERSE:

… There is always someone to live for and someone to love

There is always why to live, why fight

In the end the works remain the people leave

Others who come will continue life remains the same…”

ANNOUNCER

Julio Iglesias had literally needed a push to go on stage, he had no experience, but he had told himself that this was his great opportunity. So he sang and became the big winner that night.

JULIO IGLESIAS

That's where it all started, yes... Our lives are pure circumstances and if I hadn't had the circumstance, first of the accident, which is the basis of my life because if not, I wouldn't have written Life goes on the same. If I hadn't had the circumstance of that the record company gave the song to Manolo and Manolo, a canary boy, handsome, was going to sing it and suddenly he got hepatitis and the company told me “what do we do with the song? Do you know how to go to a festival?” and I “no, he just played the guitar”, “it's not that it's with an orchestra”... I haven't sung with an orchestra in my life, but I sang. I sang so-so, but I was lucky that people understood the song immediately.”

ANNOUNCER

Thus, almost by chance, Julio Iglesias scored his first great triumph. Although he didn't know it yet, he just changed the course of his life. That night he got off the stage euphoric, he had the first 150,000 pesetas won with his voice and in his hands a gold mermaid as a trophy. Photographers and journalists were already waiting for him. In a matter of days his song was playing at all hours...

LIFE ENDS STILL THE SAME

"Few friends who are real

How much they flatter you if you are triumphing

And if you fail well you will understand

The good ones stay, the rest go

There is always someone to live for, someone to love

There is always why to live, why fight

In the end the works remain the people leave

Others that come will continue them

Life goes on"…

ANNOUNCER

The Benidorm Festival was Julio Iglesias' letter of introduction: there he gained the necessary confidence to embark on a career that would take off unstoppably in just two years. But let's stop: who is Julio Iglesias?

You have to go back to September 23, 1943, to post-war Spain and its limited means. In a maternity hospital on Mesón de Paredes street, in the traditional Madrid neighborhood of Lavapiés, a Galician doctor and his wife welcomed the first of their two children after a very complicated caesarean section during which the worst was feared. …

JULIO IGLESIAS

I think the best goal of my life is when my father and my mother decided to have a child and I left screaming because I was born by cesarean section and I think I really wanted to live now. Precisely my start towards the light of life was with desire, with rage to leave. I couldn't get out and I got out. So that was already wonderful. That's why my mother called Julius Caesar for me, because of the caesarean section...

ANNOUNCER

His parents changed their minds and called him Julio José. His happy childhood was spent in the Argüelles neighborhood, on Benito Gutiérrez street, in the center of Madrid. His father, Dr. Julio Iglesias Puga, a key character in his life and about whom we will talk in depth, things went very well and the family enjoyed a standard of living that would become progressively more comfortable.

The toy that marked Julio's childhood was the ball. He still remembers how his father would get angry when he caught him scoring the goal with a coat recently bought at El Corte Inglés. By dint of taking balls, he ended up becoming the official goalkeeper of the school and if he ever had a musical inclination, it was quickly cut off.

His first summers, before the family went to Peñíscola, were spent in Galicia, where the origins of Dr. Iglesias Puga are. The family enjoyed the holidays between Orense and the disappeared O Pote hostel in Cangas do Morrazo. There he ate seafood for the first time and fell in love with a land to which he is attached by a strong feeling of belonging.

JULIO IGLESIAS

Music was not a natural connotation in my life, that is, when I was 15, 16, 17, 18, 19 years old, for me music was passive. He knew who Elvis Presley was, he knew who Sinatra was, Nat King Cole, but he wasn't very interested in buying a record, he had nothing to do with it. I was a born athlete...

ANNOUNCER

At the age of 16, Julio Iglesias took the entrance exams for Real Madrid, the team of which he had always been a member. He was admitted to the juniors and combined training with law studies, a career that he chose as a springboard for another profession, perhaps that of a diplomat. It was not very clear to me. Dr. Iglesias Puga did not like the idea of ​​football for fear that he would drop out of his studies, but he ended up supporting him, as he would all his life...

FRIAR ALPHRED

“His father is the person who has influenced him the most, in some way the one who has been closest to him, has accompanied him in difficult times. He was a very positive person, he pushed him a lot, also professionally, in everything, in football; in the race, you have to be the best lawyer; as a singer, he told him you are going to succeed, he was very positive ”.

ANNOUNCER

Alfredo Fraile, manager of Julio Iglesias for fifteen years, told us this and much more. He agreed to have a coffee with us during his last Christmas in Madrid and he did it because of the affection he still felt for the founders of the magazine ¡HOLA! In March 2021 Alfredo Fraile passed away from the coronavirus. We want to honor his memory and thank him for this interview, the last one he granted.

FRIAR ALPHRED

“Julio and I went to the same school, the Sagrados Corazones… Julio already liked to sing and play the guitar, at school festivals he would go out and sing boleros… but he never thought of dedicating himself to it. He liked football, and he was signed by RM in youth, everything was going well, until he had that car accident that, unfortunately and fortunately, changed his life. ”

ANNOUNCER

That accident that Fraile tells us about happened in the month of September 1963. Julio Iglesias was celebrating the twenty years he was about to turn at the Majadahonda festivities. He had arrived in this town northwest of Madrid driving the Renault Dauphine and along with his friends Tito Arroyo, Enrique Clemente and Pedro Luis Iglesias. They ran the bull runs in the afternoon, dined in the street and danced with the girls who were there for the summer, some already known from other parties in the capital. When the verbena ended, the four of them got into the car back to Madrid. They were chatting animatedly when, near the neighborhood of El Plantío, a curve taken at high speed caused Julio to lose control of the vehicle.

Meanwhile, in the center of Madrid, Julio's mother, Rosario de la Cueva, was waiting for him awake, standing by the window. When one of her two children went out, she waited awake for her return. That night was later than usual; she sensed that something bad was happening.

The red Renault that Julio was driving had rolled over and was completely destroyed, at the bottom of a ditch with the doors open, the radio playing and the lights still on. The four occupants were able to stand up, sore and disoriented they thought they had been lucky, at least it seemed so.

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When Julio got home he had no choice but to tell what had happened. His parents were angry, but in the end there was relief that no one had been hurt. However, the consequences of that impact would be fatal for him.

After the accident he began an exciting academic and sports course. His law studies were going well and he had the chance to be a goalkeeper with the first team. But one day, without warning, while training at the Ciudad Deportiva, Julio Iglesias notices that his legs lose strength. Another day, at the Santiago Bernabéu, he lost his balance. These would be just the first signs. In a matter of weeks he suffers from excruciating pain and begins a long pilgrimage through the best specialists in the country. Time passed and no one gave him an answer. Julio no longer slept, he was breathing with difficulty and the simple movement that causes a sneeze made him lose consciousness. When Christmas 1963 arrives, three months after the accident, Julio Iglesias becomes a paraplegic.

JULIO IGLESIAS

“When I had the accident, my father, who was a great surgeon, was the director of a very great clinic. I remember that my father left his degree for almost a year and devoted himself to myself. To talk with me, to walk with me, to swim with me. They are things that one has stuck to the soul forever.

ANNOUNCER

Dr. Iglesias Puga asked his contacts for help and managed to bring together the best experts of the time. Finally, one of General Franco's internists warns that Julio is suffering from severe spinal cord compression and he is urgently admitted to the Eloy Gonzalo hospital in Madrid. After eight hours in the operating room and with the cyst out of the spine, Julio wakes up. The prognosis is the worst: he could never walk again.

The radiotherapy prescribed by another of the doctors who studied his case ended up consuming him. Julio weighed 45 kilos, his skin was stuck to his bones and he felt like a broken doll, until Dr. Iglesias Puga, who was never convinced by this treatment, took him home.

The months were eternal until the miracle happened: Julio Iglesias managed to move a toe. Just as his father had predicted: there was hope. Father and son devoted themselves completely to his recovery and it was at that moment that a doctor's assistant placed a guitar in Julio's hands.

JULIO IGLESIAS

I woke up to music by chance, because suddenly I had to do therapy with a guitar, a guitar that could have been anything else, that I had to move my hands.

And there I began to make little chords and babble some song, and I wrote Life goes on the same, I wrote many songs at that time, at a time when I had 3 notes in my hand, I was capable of making a song. Now I am not able, but at that time yes. And through that circumstantial moment is when I start to sing…

It was an absolutely independent emotion. Now, everything I sang afterwards, everything I wrote, I was already thinking - how my mom, my dad, my friends had liked the song... - I was always thinking: "Will he like this one?". But not that one. I only liked that one. It was a very thoughtful song, very true...

ANNOUNCER

With an implacable will, in April 1964 Julio Iglesias walked, first with the help of two canes and months later alone.

JULIO IGLESIAS

I always had, thank God, the great luck that my central spinal system was not severed, it was very injured, so I had a chance to fight against that big accident and survive.

ANNOUNCER

The soccer player had died forever, but Julio Iglesias had been born a second time. It was time to reorganize his life. His father wanted him to go back to his law studies and encouraged him to go to the UK to learn English. At the University of Cambridge, Julio Iglesias falls in love with a certain Gwendolyne, while she begins to play in a pub in London. From this time there are some curious anecdotes, almost foreboding, like the one told by Ramón Arcusa, one of the components of the Dynamic Duo and who over time would end up working with Julio. The musician remembers being in London for Eurovision, in April 1968 with the La La La that he had composed for Masiel, an unknown Julio Iglesias stood before them...

RAMON ARCUSA

The day before the Festival… Televisión Española threw a party at the hotel where we were, in the middle of the party a boy came to see us, as they have come to see us dozens of hundreds of times. He said, 'Hello, how are you? I am Spanish and I am here studying and I am going to tell you two things: one, that you are going to win Eurovision tomorrow; and the second, is that you are going to hear about me and that was Julio Iglesias”.

ANNOUNCER

Another anecdote is told to us by the footballer José Martínez Sánchez, better known as “Pirri”…

JOSE MARTINEZ SANCHEZ - PIRRI

“We went to play a game in London, in England, where he was studying. He logically appeared at the hotel to greet Grosso, Velázquez and De Felipe, because they had played with him. And my roommate was Grosso, so Julio came to the room, they introduced him to me, I was talking to him, very well… Then I remember that he told Grosso: tomorrow I'll come with the guitar. Wine, he sang it to us in the room. He was a very nice guy, he was studying in London but he wasn't a singer, he hadn't started. So, that summer, when I was going with my wife to Ceuta, which is my city, I heard a piece of news on the radio, which said: Julio Iglesias had just won the Benidorm “tournament” singing such… and I said, damn! if this is the song that he sang to me with Grosso in the room. It's a coincidence, but it was like that,...

ANNOUNCER

Julio Iglesias returned from London ready to open a niche in the world of music with the song Life is still the same. He knocked on the doors of all the record companies and after several refusals, he met Enrique Martín Garea, a historic record manager who had promoted some of the artists of the moment. His was the idea for Julio Iglesias to appear at the International Song Festival and his was that push that we mentioned at the beginning, which made him almost stumble on stage. After the success of Benidorm, Julio Iglesias even appeared in No-Do, the weekly news of the time...

radio sound

"The winning song is called Life goes on the same, its author is Julio Iglesias, a boy who was going to be a footballer, but who was left in the lurch by an accident and is now a lawyer and songwriter."

ANNOUNCER

He also recorded his first album in London; He starred in an autobiographical film and traveled to the legendary San Remo and Viña del Mar Festivals. On that trip to Chile, which he makes in the company of his father due to his fear of flying, they ask him for an autograph for the first time. Those beginnings in music were witnessed by José Ramón Pardo, one of the journalists who knows the most about music in Spain…

JOSE RAMON PARDO

“I met Julio in 1968, which was when he made his debut. At that time I wrote about music in the ABC newspaper and in the Monday Sheet and he was one of the new singers who appeared on the market and who presented us with his records. I admit that I didn't like it too much, something that Julio himself reproached me for many years later…”.

ANNOUNCER

Although not everyone was betting on him, from the beginning Julio Iglesias had something that he liked, at least that is how Alfredo Fraile saw it, who, as we have mentioned, would end up being his manager until 1984.

FRIAR ALPHRED

Julio has that charm that God has given him and somehow he made people like him, he was polite, correct, he was something different on stage, he has a particular voice when you hear him you know it's Julio's voice... . Being able to have your own stamp and Julio had it, he had it in his voice... and then in his way of being on stage and off stage, Julio also had a lot of charm when he came down from the stage and the people he approached…

ANNOUNCER

After the boom of "Life is the same", the second song known by Julio Iglesias was "Gwendolyne". A decisive theme since with it he made the international leap in Eurovision. But let's stop, what does the name of Gwendolyne sound like?

This French woman of Russian descent was his first love after the accident. She was blonde with light eyes, friendly, open... Gwendolyne was 18 years old when she met Julio, 24. They were both studying English at Cambridge. Their love story was intense, like the song, and had several chapters.

Julio flew to France with the money he earned from her in Benidorm to meet her at the Hilton hotel in a Paris that had already lived through hers in May 1968.

Spain was light years away from that, but Julio wanted Gwendolyne to see the landscapes of her childhood and together they traveled to Galicia. The couple even fantasized about a wedding or the idea of ​​going to the United States, however, the singer's career had only just begun. Little by little the distance was imposed between them, the letters were spaced out and the calls ceased to be daily, but that youthful love served for Julio Iglesias to write the song that would open the doors of all of Europe to him...

RAMON ARCUSA

A well-constructed song, Julio has always constructed songs very well. It was very good”

“Whenever love intervenes, real love, lived love, the songs you make are better, musically it was very good and the lyrics corresponded to a love song…”

ANNOUNCER

With this theme, which Ramón Arcusa describes for us, on March 21, 1970, Julio Iglesias represents Spain in Eurovision, accompanied by the trio La la la and under the baton of Augusto Algueró.

SOUNDS JULY CHURCHES

“And now from Spain, Julio Iglesias. He wrote the song he's going to sing himself. It's called Gwendolyne”.

ANNOUNCER

In his presentation video, Julio goes through the emblematic places of Madrid: La Cibeles, Plaza Mayor, Plaza de España and, of course, the Santiago Bernabéu. Although at that time Spain had a single television channel and it was in black and white, Julio Iglesias recorded that video for Europe in full color.

JOSE RAMON PARDO

He had a defect that was putting his hands in his pockets. That was fixed for him in Eurovision because they sent him with a suit without pockets. Then he began to make some gestures: to take the microphone and put it here, hit his chest,... the truth is that Julio learned to sing, he sings very well. And he has reached a level absolutely unimaginable for any national artist”.

ANNOUNCER

José Ramón Pardo is one of those who believes that Julio Iglesias perfected his voice and his style over time, but the truth is that now, when his success is already more than consolidated, few remember that with that performance he did not win Eurovision. What he got was a fourth place, but the reality is that he got something that was worth much more: his song was the one that played the most on radio and television in Europe. Gwendolyne stayed for nine consecutive weeks at number one, becoming the best-selling song of the year. A first success of figures that would be only the beginning...

JOSE RAMON PARDO

“Julio has tremendous personal charm. That is to say, he is capable of conquering a huge stage and is capable of conquering every person who talks to him, be it a man or a woman. He has great empathy with people. And that has served him well. But above all, his ability to move a stage of 20,000 people and make each person think that they are singing for him”.

ANNOUNCER

When the seventies began, his career was already promising, but he himself did not believe it. One example is that when HELLO! he interviewed him for the cover on the occasion of his imminent wedding with a stranger named Isabel Preysler, he insisted that he was a lawyer and not a singer. Once again, fate had other plans for him, but first you have to know how that wedding was and how a marriage that had three children developed while Julio Iglesias' career took off in a meteoric way.

LISTEN TO KNOW THIS AND MUCH MORE IN THE SECOND EPISODE OF OUR PODCAST