Somebody get this kid on Maury. Spanish pop crooner Javier Santos -- who goes by only his first name -- has spent the past ten years proclaiming he is the love child of Indian Creek Village Lothario Julio Iglesias, which makes him the half-brother of slightly less fossilized Sunset Island Lothario Enrique Iglesias. "In 1975, Julio was doing a tour in Portugal," explains Bradley MacMayer, Javier's enthusiastic PR flack. "He had a two-week affair with a fan named Maria Edite Santos."
And boom-bam, Javier was created, destined to fill his genetic role singing Spanish love songs to stadiums full of lovelorn receptionists in Topeka. But, says MacMayer, Julio "refuses to acknowledge his son," including Javier's standing DNA test challenge. Mama Maria
has even written a book about the alleged love child, titled, quite
simply, Un Filho con Julio Iglesias, or A Child with Julio Iglesias. We're guessing it's no Ulysses. Ditto for Daphne Lockyer's unofficial Julio Iglesias: The Unsung Story, which devotes a couple of pages to Javier -- although we were entranced by that book's back-cover summary, which portrays the aging singer as brooding and paranoid, a sort of Citizen Kane with a granite-melting voice:
To the fans who adore him, Julio Iglesias is the ultimate Conquistador... But fame and success have come at a price, and the star often cuts a solitary and desperate figure. He is a man of two faces. The public face he bares willingly, the private he guards obsessively -- wishing to hide the more troubling aspects of a life that even modern filmmakers might call farfetched.That story is a rich tapestry of shade and light -- of love and hate, of loss and gain, of triumph and defeat. It encompasses the days when a spinal tumor left Iglesias paralyzed for two years, the bleak days after his divorce, the horror of his father's kidnapping by Basque terrorists, and the depression and despair that led to his long dark night of the soul. It is, however, in other ways, a story of sunshine, suntan, and happiness-of good times and phenomenal success. It is the ultimate and bittersweet tale of wine, women, and song.
Whoa. As for Javier's own career, his 1999 album, Lucha y Veras, or Struggle and Truth (get the message, Julio?!), sold more than 250,000 copies, most of them in Europe and Latin America, says MacMayer: "Since then, he took ten years off, to take care of legal issues in Spain trying to prove that Julio's his father."
The Spanish wheels of paternal justice grind slowly indeed. Javier's comeback tour hits South Florida later this month -- he's working on solidifying gigs at the Seminole Hard Rock in Hollywood and Revolution Live in Fort Lauderdale.
But, Riptide posits, why the obsession with papa? "It's not about proving to the public that it's his dad," ruminates MacMayer. "For Javier, it's about knowing who his father is."
