A bunker in purgatory: the complicated relationship between Shakira and Barcelona

Shakira on the beach of Barceloneta, during the filming of the video clip 'Loca', in August 2010. JONATHAN GREVSEN (AFP via Getty Images)

From going around the Moll de la Fusta on a Harley without a helmet howling like a wolf to having a witch on a human scale pointing at her mother-in-law in her house in the upper area of ​​Esplugues de Llobregat.

This urban geography could serve as an allegory for the passage from 30 to 40 years of age, but that has been Shakira's journey through Barcelona (and its periphery) in the last 13 years.

What happened in the city between "I'm crazy with my tiger/they tell me that your girlfriend carries a rifle/while he buys you flowers, I buy condoms" to "You left me as a neighbor to the mother-in-law/ with the Treasury debt and the press at the door”?

What happened between the 2010 song

with that Shakira skating on the Barceloneta beach, surrounded by crowds and bathing in broad daylight in urban fountains without fear of fines and the Shakira of the

of 2023 secluded in a studio that smells like an unventilated

's room , voicing her spite, and denouncing that she practically lives as a hostage?

It could be said that Shakira's idyll with the Catalan capital has been like a movie trailer in which the film promised a lot, but when you watch it, you understand that the plot doesn't engage.

That there is no trace of the chemistry that was intuited with the protagonists and you leave the cinema promising that you will not fall into that anticipated trap again.

This has been a bit of her Barcelona stage.

Or, rather, the story of a friendly but distant routine, with its back to the bustle of the city.

Shakira records the video clip <i>Loca</i> in Barcelona on August 18, 2010GTRES

A “comfortable and quiet” life

“Here Shakira has led a comfortable and quiet life.

Now what he wants is to sell his house and get out because he can't deal with this man anymore", summarizes the journalist Laura Fa, a reporter who could be defined as a "shakirologist" for having followed the Colombian since she landed in Spain in 2010, when the “waka rumors” of his relationship with the “sir” he is talking about – the former Barça player Gerard Piqué – flooded everything.

Shortly after they met recording that video clip of the World Cup song in South Africa that would change everything, Shakira Isabel Mebarak Ripoll honored the origins of her maternal surname and made a surprise visit with Antonio de la Rúa, her partner and representative of her, Ripoll.

Soon after, she settled in Barcelona to shoot the Freixenet campaign and,

Until they made their break official in January 2011, saying that they had "taken time" since the summer, they still lived with the Argentine businessman in the house they shared and rented from swimmer David Meca in Bellaterra, about 20 kilometers from the Catalan capital.

"Shakira settled here because of Piqué, but she already had a very good relationship with the city, she came a lot to record with producer Jaime de la Iguana," recalls the chronicler who collaborates on programs like

(Telecinco) or

(Rac1), responsible for some of the exclusives of Piqué's new relationship with Clara Chía.

Piqué and Shakira, in a 2015 image. David Ramos (GETTY IMAGES)

In February 2011, when Piqué uploaded a photo of their shared birthday —they were born on the same day, but ten years apart—, it became official.

In the courtship phase, as usually happens, everything shone brighter and better in the city.

Those were the times in which they lived in the center and later moved to their 380-meter house in Esplugues, in which Shakira would take Barça players up on the stage of the Estadi Lluis Companys to teach them unsuccessfully to move their hips or they could be seen eating in an Italian in the upper part of the city, in a Japanese in the Gothic Quarter or having cocktails in the Born.

In 2013, Milan arrived, her first child, and shortly after she released

, a serene album in which she dedicated a song to Piqué (

, the years he was when he met her), thanking him for being his “anchor” and even covered

, the ex-Blaugrana's favorite song, for him.

But more than any chronicler of the heart, the one who has best followed the trail of Shakira in Barcelona was Susana C., the tax inspector who has investigated her for all these years, accusing her of defrauding 14.5 million, proving that there was no trace of life of the singer in the house where she supposedly resided for the treasury, on the island of Nassau (Bahamas).

Susana C. knows that her hairdresser did her hair for free twice a week at her house in Esplugues, that she had spent 418,046 euros in 279 establishments in Barcelona, ​​where she received private French classes, that her Zumba teacher was called Betsie and even her name in code every time she stepped foot in the Teknon private clinic, where she gave birth to her children: Sila Prieto.

Shakira, upon her arrival at the Court of First Instance and Family No. 18 of Barcelona together with her brother Tonino to ratify the separation demand and the agreement on the custody of their children with Piqué, in December 2022, in Barcelona.david oller (Europe Press)

“With motherhood, Shakira opted for a very family life.

She has relied a lot on her brother Tonino to take turns in the children's affairs and she hardly has any friends here.

She seemed like she was going to connect with Antonella, Messi's wife, but she didn't stick.

It only seems that she has done it with Rosana, Patrick Kluivert's wife, and with the group of parents from her children's school, who are very supportive of her and have even blocked the

with her car for her ”, explains Fa.

The school he is talking about is the exclusive private center La Miranda, in Sant Just Desvern, where they pay about 800 euros per month per child only between Infant and Primary and where Shakira is usually seen picking them up with her Volkswagen California.

Refugee in sport —she goes to the Bonasport gym in the upper area of ​​the city, receives paddle tennis classes at home and attended the Emilio Sánchez Vicario tennis academy in El Prat—, the glamor of the Colombian was always far from Barcelona .

Public events and brilliance, abroad.

Like when she was a jury member of the American version of

or posed for the

of the Cannes festival.

Here he always opted for a discreet profile.

If the dancer Txiqui Martí began to teach her, she had to go to her house.

And if it had to be news, beyond her economic dispute, it would be for being attacked by two wild boars in the Collserola mountains or for the death of her rabbit Max, the pet that had its own duplex designed by a Barcelona architect.

A life secluded in a bunker to stay, she already insists on her subject, with the debt from the Treasury, the press at the door and as a neighbor to her mother-in-law.

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