This is how the three-year journalistic investigation on Julio Iglesias unfolded

Julio Iglesias filed a legal complaint against elDiario.es and several journalists for publishing accusations of sexual assault from former employees following an investigation by this outlet with Univision Noticias. In his legal complaint, he questioned the journalistic process. This is the story of how that investigation unfolded.

At 2:03 PM on January 17, 2023, elDiario.es received a message from a man who identified himself with a pseudonym and claimed to have firsthand knowledge of a “really big” MeToo case—as he described it—involving a prominent Spaniard. He did not mention the person's name or provide any clues on their identity.

He said he had seen the program Salvados aired two days earlier on La Sexta about the sexual abuse allegations against Plácido Domingo, and that my words during the program caught his attention. In a segment for context that preceded the details of the investigation by Carola Solé and Eva Lamarca, I said that in Spain there had been no journalistic investigation on abuses equivalent to those by the major media outlets in the United States up to that point. I highlighted the standards and diligence with which the New York Times and the AP news agency had investigated these kinds of serious and sensitive cases.

The man who contacted elDiario.es explicitly said that he expected a careful journalistic process. In his initial message, he said that this wasn't information “that could be published in a newspaper tomorrow,” but rather that he had details for “someone with the will and resources to investigate the matter.” “That someone is the one I'm looking for,” he said.

Ander Oliden, deputy director of elDiario.es, read the message and forwarded it that same day to Elena Cabrera, the head of the Culture section. With the usual caution in the newsroom regarding unsolicited contacts, Ander suggested that “it could be something interesting” and that it was worth speaking with this person. After an initial phone conversation, Elena told him what she found. It didn’t seem “something interesting.”

The first meeting

On January 31, 2023, Elena met the man for the first time in a city other than Madrid. The journalist knew what was about, but had few details until that meeting.

The man told her about former employees of Julio Iglesias who, according to them, had been victims of sexual assault in recent years (the singer denied the accusations in a statement in January 2026). He showed her messages and other documentation, suggesting names and possible leads. But it was clear that this contact didn’t equate to having a corroborated, publishable story. It may never happen. The man then doubted that the women who had experienced the trauma he described were ready to speak. Perhaps they would be willing if they felt supported by others who may have had similar experiences, but the reporter must find them on her own.

“Elena told me the story in early 2023, shortly after receiving the first leads. I told her it was going to be very difficult, but to try. At that time, it seemed almost impossible that we would ever be able to publish it,” explained Ignacio Escolar, the director of elDiario.es. “Back then, we only had indirect testimony. We hadn't even been able to speak with any of the women. There was an ocean between us, and it seemed very difficult to contact them and get them to tell us what had happened.”

In February 2023, Elena began tracking down current and former employees of Julio Iglesias's mansions. She already had some names, searched for photos, and read articles and books about the singer, some of them out-of-print, which she bought on Wallapop.

Elena found information on social media profiles. Through interactions—such as messages and “likes”—she began to understand the relationships between people and gathered more names of women who could be potential interviewees. “I couldn't know whether or not they would have a story of abuse before speaking with them, but once I got an idea of what the pattern was, then I was able to identify the women,” she explained.

Once she located some of the women she believed have worked for Iglesias or knew the mansions, Elena sent private messages from an account with a professional profile that identifies her as a journalist for elDiario.es. In the messages, as she emphasized when recalling the journalistic process, she also introduced herself as a reporter for this publication before beginning to ask questions.

How to investigate

After nearly a year of research, Elena identified more than 30 women who had worked in Iglesias's mansions in the Dominican Republic, the Bahamas, the United States, and Spain. She believed there may be victims or witnesses of abuse among them. But for months, none of these women agreed to a formal interview—one that could be recorded and used for the investigation.

Elena, who for the first two years continued to run the Culture section and dedicated herself to this research almost always at night, often talked with Ana Requena, head of gender affairs and responsible for major journalist investigations on sexual violence published by the newspaper in recent years. As Ana recalled, they discussed how to approach women who may have been victims of abuse. These are also women who are especially vulnerable due to their economic situation, their youth, and their hierarchical position. From the beginning, it’s clear the power imbalance between a twenty-something cleaning woman and one of the richest and best connected artists in the world.

Ana helped as an expert on this particularly sensitive information and began to investigate legislation and local associations of domestic workers with her own contacts in the Dominican Republic.

The call

After several conversations in the spring of 2024, a woman agreed to tell her story on the condition that her name not be used in the article. Elena spoke to her on the phone one night while everyone else in her Madrid home was asleep. The woman was in her car, parked by the sea. For readers, one day that woman will be known as “Rebeca.”

The first formal interview with Rebeca – that is, the first one that can be recorded and whose content can be published – took place on the night of June 4-5, 2024 via video call.

The interviewers were Elena Cabrera and Raquel Ejerique, senior editor and investigative journalist who uncovered the scandal about the master's degree case of Cristina Cifuentes in 2018. That interview was the first of several formal sessions up to the one recorded on video in October 2025. In addition, there were multiple conversations with follow-up questions until the time of publication, in January 2026. From the first to the last interview, the details that Rebeca recounts are the same.

The interviews

In the spring of 2024, Elena Cabrera, Ana Requena, and Raquel Ejerique started working as a team to interview women and verify their accounts, checking for evidence or contradictions. The first photo of the three working together in this story was taken that May.

In the summer 2024, they interviewed other women, including the one identified in the investigation with the pseudonym Carolina, a former employee who recounted what she considers to be labor exploitation. Throughout the investigation, and eventually with a larger team, they spoke with more than a dozen women and men who had worked for the singer. These individuals were, in some cases, witnesses to situations described by the women who reported abuse. In other cases, they provided general context or relevant details.

But that summer there was still a long way to go before making a decision about publishing: the doubts about telling the story even without using the real name, the women's fear of what the affected person might do, and the laborious work of verifying some key details of what they said.

Raquel Ejerique began to develop a framework for what she calls the “traceability” of history. It is a list that includes results from gynecological tests–one of the most striking pieces of documentation–, messages, visas and testimonies from other people.

In investigations like this one, one essential practice, which we later developed with our publishing partner, Univision, involves interviewing people to whom these women recounted their experiences when they occurred. In some cases, these are friends or mental health professionals who provided advice or treatment to the women.

Speaking with these people is a form of corroboration that Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey formalized in their investigation of Harvey Weinstein and about which they write in their book She Said. The aim is to find “consistent prior testimonies” of what happened that the women gave to other people shortly after the events described.

The New York Times reporters explained that testimonies of this kind serve as additional evidence in journalistic work about events where there are rarely direct witnesses or formal complaints. In terms of credibility, it matters that the woman recounted what happened to several people in a private setting, with no other intention than to vent her feelings.

It is common for these cases to go unreported to the police, especially in contexts where, due to the country where the events occur or the power profile of the person in question, women have little expectation of justice.

“Survivors turn to journalists to obtain what they believe the courts are denying them: a fair hearing. Fact-checking in journalism also includes the accused's right to respond. Before publishing, they are contacted and given the opportunity,” she explained to elDiario.es Leigh Gilmore, professor and author of a book about the history of MeToo. 

Gilmore recalled that although in 2017 social media offered an outlet for many survivors with the #MeToo hashtag, in the United States “the big cases that people know about were revealed by journalists: Julie Brown’s The Miami Herald published the Jeffrey Epstein story; journalists from The Indianapolis Star published Larry Nassar's story… That way of practicing journalism—and certainly not all media outlets practice it that way—offered many survivors the best opportunity to present a verified story in the public sphere.”

The first interview by elDiario.es with the physiotherapist identified as Laura in the article took place in January 2025. Elena interviewed her formally for the first time in two long conversations, one on January 11 and the other on February 22 of that year.

The reporters had more leads and kept investigating, but there was still work to be done and more help from outside Spain was needed.

The alliance with Univision

The editor-in-chief of elDiario.es, aware of the magnitude of the story, suggested seeking another international news outlet to share and complete the investigation.

On March 11, 2025, José Precedo, deputy to the editor-in-chief of elDiario.es, called me and asked me to use my contacts to find a media outlet in the English-speaking world to join us in completing and publishing the story.

On March 21, I had my first formal conversation with Federica Narancio and Esther Poveda, reporters from the Univision News digital team and winners of prestigious journalism awards. I had worked with them in the United States a decade ago in Univision covering national politics, including Donald Trump's first Presidential campaign.

What elDiario.es was looking for was a larger media outlet from outside Spain, preferably from the United States, due to its proximity to the story and its journalistic standards. When Federica, Esther, and José Ángel Gonzalo, head of the Univision digital team, learned more details, their interest in participating in the journalistic endeavor grew. Daniel Coronell, an investigative journalist and then head of news at Univision, got involved and provided the necessary support for the editorial work.

In June 2025, before signing the collaboration agreement with Univision, Elena traveled to the Dominican Republic and the Bahamas to meet in person some of the women she had been speaking with remotely for over a year. She conducted more interviews and made more contacts.

By then, Izaskun Pérez, audiovisual director of elDiario.es, was also on the team. One night, we remotely tracked Elena's movements using her mobile phone's location shared live, so we knew exactly where she was conducting the interviews. She shared her impressions at the moment with us, as well as the fears women have when talking about something so sensitive that affects someone so powerful.

The joint investigation

That summer, we were joined too by the Univision television team, led by Gerardo Reyes, investigative journalist and co-winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Best Investigation when he was a reporter at the Miami Herald. The Pulitzer Prize is one of the many awards in his career.

At the end of the summer, Univision helped to complete the story, reviewing and adding to the testimonies and documentation we already had. Gerardo and the rest of the team found more sources through intensive reporting and verification.

Univision's legal team asked for a review of all available documents and re-interviewing the affected women. That’s a point that took weeks of negotiation due to the sensitive nature of the matter. The women had to share again unpleasant details and, in a way, relived the story they had already told several times to reporters from elDiario.es. They did so again via video call with both teams in September.

From then on, the editorial teams of elDiario.es and Univision conducted the calls, interviews, and fact-checks jointly. Interviews often involved people from both outlets. On the rare occasions when this wasn't the case, transcripts, recordings, and notes were shared.

In October 2025, teams from elDiario.es and Univision traveled together to conduct further interviews and record them on video. By that time, two of the women already had their own lawyers.

Due to their fear of sharing their testimony, two of the interviewees were referred to an international human rights organization Women's Link Worldwide. The women accepted this legal advice of their own volition and without media involvement. After this organization spoke with its clients privately, the women decided to take legal action and file a complaint with the National Court prosecutor's office in Spain shortly before the publication of the journalistic investigation.

Protection of sources

The lawyers for two of the women interviewed by elDiario.es and Univision set conditions for the on-camera interviews in the fall of 2025. In addition to not using their names or images in a recognizable way, the women did not want their voices broadcast publicly. They agreed to having their hands or silhouettes recorded, but they did not want their voices heard in the published videos.

The options of distorting the voice or using artificial intelligence didn't appeal to them because they feared the effects might be reversible or the result might sound shady. They preferred real women to dub their voices.

The Univision team, with extensive experience in protecting migrants and vulnerable individuals from persecution and harassment in challenging contexts during on-camera interviews, seeked professional voice-over artists to accurately reproduce the testimonies word for word and with the same intonation as the original recordings, including the pauses, hesitations, and tears that sometimes interrupt the narrative. The published videos indicated that the voice-over was used to protect the women.

This is a common journalistic practice to protect people who may be in danger for giving their testimony. The award-winning US investigative media outlet ProPublica did it in its report on civilians killed by CIA commandos in Afghanistan and in the documentary that he made afterwards with The New Yorker. Univision itself did it with interviews from exploited workers in a potato plant in Texas. Another example is the Spanish journalist Antonio Pampliega in his podcast about drug trafficking on the Costa del Sol. More recently, producers of BBC Radio are lending their voices to testimonies from Iranians who remain in their country.

The complete interviews with the women, like the previous ones, were recorded and transcribed. They are long interviews. Gerardo's on-camera interviews with Rebeca and Laura each lasted about three hours.

During the trip, both media outlets conducted more interviews, including with former male employees, among them some who filed a complaint against the singer due to labor disputes. The former employees reported having been insulted and complained of situations they described as workplace abuse. They shared their documentation of these legal proceedings, and the teams interviewed one of their lawyers.

Neither the women ask the media for money in exchange for their testimony, nor do elDiario.es or Univision offer it to them. The publication Okdiario a few weeks ago claimed that Julio Iglesias's inner circle had “proof” that “several employees were offered money” to testify against him. The journalists in charge of the investigation emphasized that this did not happen.

“I have never offered money or any kind of compensation for an interview. Not in this investigation, nor in any other. Nor has any of the women I have interviewed for this story ever asked me for it,” explained Elena Cabrera. “We can invite someone for coffee or a meal, which I consider a normal courtesy for someone who is giving you their time, but offering money in exchange for an interview undermines the relationship of trust between the journalist and the source, and can make you doubt the veracity of what they tell you. That's why it's not done.”

During the investigation, a source – who is not one of the women – did request money as compensation for a possible trip to find more testimonies, but Elena replied that this was not possible due to the newspaper's ethical standards.

Any request for money in exchange for information violates the ethical code of elDiario.es and Univision. The only recurring request from the women and other witnesses was that their identity and safety be protected.

“At elDiario.es we never pay the people we interview or our sources for information. Under no circumstances: not in this investigation nor in any other. It is an ethical principle that is also reflected in our statutes,” explained Ignacio Escolar.

“elDiario.es does not buy information: it pays journalists, but never sources. It does this to avoid encouraging the fabrication of false information and the marketing of illegally obtained data,” said the Article 68 of the statute.

The fact-checking

At the end of autumn, the process of verifying the articles continued, and the process of verifying the audiovisual material began. For weeks, the journalists from elDiario.es and Univision reviewed every word of every sentence to avoid making accusations without proof. We asked ourselves about dates, ensured that the details match across the numerous interviews conducted over the years, and verified that the quotes are verbatim. We checked the names of places, the women's ages, and what they remember.

We questioned every detail that didn't fit until the very last moment, and we even managed to answer some that were irrelevant to the story.

In that process, we also followed up with the women interviewed and requested more information from their lawyers. For example, we included the text messages Rebeca sent after she left Julio Iglesias's house, telling him she “loved him very much,” and asked her to explain again why she did so. Rebeca told elDiario.es and Univision that at one point she considered gathering evidence of the abuse she claims to have suffered, but soon after decided against it and tried to forget. Rebeca's messages and her explanations were included from the beginning in the first report published by elDiario.es and Univision.

Part of the job involved providing context to situations and carefully choosing words in this type of reporting. Ana Requena guided the teams to craft each sentence with care, considering the connotations of expressions and the prejudices against women in this context. Sometimes, there were differences in journalistic traditions or even in the use of Spanish in Spain and the United States.

The review and fact-checking lasted for months and continued until the final hours before publication. Each piece was read and discussed by the three main reporters, as well as several editors and Natalia Chientaroli, deputy editor and longtime head of the social issues desk. During this process, I reviewed the texts line by line in their multiple versions, verifying each fact as far as possible with the documentation we have, the interview transcripts, and other sources.

Articles and videos underwent legal review by our lawyer at elDiario.es and by Univision's lawyers, who provided their own feedback. Afterward, the authors and I read the texts aloud via video call to discuss and review them further with reporters Federica Narancio and Esther Poveda, and, in the case of the television program, also with Gerardo Reyes and Margarita Rabin, the executive producer. These reading sessions continue until the end of December. Reviews were ongoing until the end.

Calling for hours

In compliance with our ethical duty, we attempted to obtain Julio Iglesias's version on January 2, 2026, that is, 11 days before the publication of the first story.

We prepared a very detailed questionnaire so that he had the opportunity to respond to the specific accusations of the women and men we have interviewed.

Elena dialed Julio Iglesias's number for the first time on January 2nd at 3:13 PM Madrid time (9:13 AM in the US East Coast, 10:13 AM in the Dominican Republic). We verified Iglesias's mobile number through several sources and also called landlines at his residences. 

That day, we spent more than four consecutive hours calling Iglesias, several legal representatives, and the managers of the employees who are also mentioned in the story. We did this together with journalists from elDiario.es and Univision, with the team connected from Madrid, Cuenca, Miami, and Washington.

That night, Russell King, Iglesias' lawyer for years and one of the few people who answered our calls, confirmed by email that he was authorized as a legal representative to receive information about the questions we wanted to ask Iglesias.

On January 5th, we spent another five hours on calls and messages. Among the few people who answered was one of the former managers of the house, who didn't respond to our specific questions but praised Iglesias and dismissed the accusations of other former employees as “lies.”

During those two days and the following ones, we left voice messages, text messages, and WhatsApp messages, and sent the questionnaire by courier. Gerardo Reyes personally delivered it to Iglesias's residences in Indian Creek, a small island across from Miami, and in Punta Cana, Dominican Republic.

Before publication, we listed (with their exact time) more than 80 contacts or attempted contacts by phone, email, and letter with Iglesias and the affected individuals. During that time, neither Iglesias nor his lawyers responded to questions or made any comments to elDiario.es or Univision.

After the publication, we continued trying without success. We later included in the text pieces and videos the statement published on Iglesias's Instagram account a few days later. The text, which includes his signature, says using the first person that he has never “abused, coerced or disrespected” any woman and that the accusations are false.

On January 13, 2026, at five in the morning in Spain, the story was published simultaneously in elDiario.es and Univision. The man who contacted us warned us that this news couldn't be published overnight. It took us almost three years.

You can read here this article in Spanish.