Julio Iglesias is ruled to be the father of 43-year-old Spanish man after court case

11 July 2019, 16:59

Spanish singer Julio Iglesias has been ruled to be the biological father of a man whose mother had a brief affair with him in 1975.

The court ruling in Spain has been welcomed by former ballerina Maria Edite Santos and her son Javier Sánchez, 43, who began the paternity claim over three decades ago.

75-year-old Iglesias - the father of singer Enrique Iglesias - had refused to provide DNA, but the judge said there was an "obvious physical resemblance".

The singer also has eight other children in total.

Julio Iglesias is one of the most successful Latin artists of all time, andhas sold over 300 million records worldwide.

He was not present at the court ruling in Valencia yesterday (July 10).

Judge José Miguel Bort said the decision was made due to the resemblance between the two men, and on the basis of Edite's testimony.

It was ruled that she had provided good evidence of her week-long affair with the singer at the time her son was conceived.

"The possibility that sexual relations took place between them is not unlikely nor preposterous," the judge said.

Sánchez had spent 30 years trying to prove that Iglesias is his father. In 1992, a court ruled in his favour, but the singer appealed and the ruling was ultimately quashed.

Iglesias was married to his first wife Isabel Preysler when the affair with is said to have taken place.

The new trial began after lawyer Fernando Osuna argued that new DNA evidence from the US by an investigator was a 99.9% match. While the DNA did not come directly from Iglesias, the sample was actually collected from "a bottle of water" used by his son, Julio Iglesias Jr.

Tests are said to have shown that Sánchez and Julio Iglesias Jr were brothers.

Julio Igleasias has three children with first wife Isabel Preysler, and five with his current partner, Dutch model Miranda Rijnsburger.