Pop Star Shakira and Gerard Pique Have Ended Their Long time Relationship
(FILES) This file photo taken on September 5, 2019 shows Colombian musician Shakira and partner Kosmoa Founder and President, Spanish football player Gerard Pique attending the Davis Cup Presentation in New York. - Colombian superstar Shakira and FC Barcelona defender Gerard Pique said on June 4, 2022 they were calling time on their relationship of more than a decade. The couple share two children. (Photo by Bryan R. Smith / AFP) (Photo by BRYAN R. SMITH/AFP via Getty Images)
Shakira, a Colombian singer, and Gerard Pique, a defender for FC Barcelona, announced on Saturday that their decade-long romance was coming to an end.
The 45-year-old “Hips Don’t Lie” singer is one of the most well-known figures in the music industry, having sold more than 60 million albums worldwide.
Pique, 35, is a three-time Champions League winner with Barcelona and has won the 2010 World Cup and the 2012 European Championship.
The couple had been living together on the outskirts of Barcelona for years and had two sons.
“We regret to confirm that we are separating. For the well-being of our children, who are our upmost priority, we request respect for (our) privacy,” they said in a statement.
Shakira, a three-time Grammy winner with a combination of Latin and Arabic rhythms and rock influences, is one of Latin America’s biggest artists, with songs like “Hips Don’t Lie” and “Whenever, Wherever” garnering massive global hits.
She performed with Jennifer Lopez at the NFL’s Super Bowl championship game halftime show in Miami in 2020, which is normally one of the most-watched half-hours on US television.
The couple announced their split barely over a week after Spanish court documents pushed Shakira closer to facing tax fraud charges in Spain after a Barcelona court refused her appeal.
Prosecutors in Spain accuse her of cheating the Spanish tax office of 14.5 million euros ($15.5 million) in earnings between 2012 and 2014.
They claim she moved to Spain in 2011 after her romance with Pique became public, but she kept her legal Bahamas tax residency until 2015.
Her defense attorneys claim she only came to Spain full-time in 2015 and that her “tax behavior has always been faultless in all the nations where she had to pay taxes.”
In a 2019 interview with AFP, Shakira described losing her voice two years prior as “the saddest time of her life” that had “seriously damaged” her.
She then recovered her voice naturally, without the need for surgery, as physicians had advised, and went on to perform a world tour in 2018.
