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50 things you didn't know about Julio Iglesias.
1. Julio Iglesias has sold more than 300 million copies of his 80 albums released worldwide, including original versions in various languages, compilations, and live albums, which makes him the Spanish-speaking artist who has sold the most albums in history.
2. As the 1983 Guinness Book of Records recognized, on awarding him the only Diamond Disc ever given by this institution, Julio is the artist who has sung and recorded in the most languages in the history of music: 20 in total. The most recent were in 2006, on the album "Romantic Classics", in Mandarin Chinese, Philippine Tagalog, and Bahasa Indonesian.
3. In the 45 years of his unstoppable career, Julio Iglesias has received 2.600 platinum and gold records.
4. He has performed more than 5.000 concerts in 600 cities around the world, and more than 60 million people have seen him perform live.
5. Julio Iglesias has sung duets with famous artists such as Frank Sinatra, Stevie Wonder, Willie Nelson, Diana Ross, Dolly Parton, Art Gurfunkel, Paul Anka, Charles Aznavour, Plácido Domingo, Sting, The Beach Boys, Nana Mouskouri, Mireille Mathieu, Dalida, Lola Flores, Pedro Vargas, Alejandro Fernández, José Luis Rodríguez, Wei Wei, Zeze di Camargo and Luciano.
6. He won a Grammy Award in 1988, and one year later was awarded a star with his name on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
7. He holds an American Music Award and the prestigious "ASCAP Pied Piper Award", the highest award of the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers, also given to Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald and Barbra Streisand.
8. In 1989 he was named UNICEF Special Ambassador for the Performing Arts, a title he holds with much affection and respect, and which he continues to carry in great esteem until the present day.
9. He is the only foreign artist honored by the Chinese Ministry of Culture, for his record-breaking sales of albums in that country.
10. On April 1st 2013, he received 2 historic awards, in Beijing, as the First & Most Popular International Artist of All Time in China, an award that was presented to him by the World Renowned Chinese Artist Lang Lang, and The Guinness World Records for being the Best-Selling Male Latin Artist in History.
11. Julio is one of the first five artists who entered the Latin Songwriters Hall of Fame, inaugurated in Miami, on April 23rd 2013. He received "La Musa" award, on that occasion.
12. In 1970 he beat records in Spain, where he gave 41 concerts in 41 cities, in only 30 days.
13. Performed for the first time in the emblematic Madison Square Gardens in New York, where he set a box-office record, selling out tickets in the shortest space of time ever registered for an artist at this venue.
14. In 1977 he beat the record in Chile for an audience where more than 100,000 people gathered for his concert held at the National Stadium in Santiago, a performance that was considered the largest musical event in history.
15. Broke a record in Japan, where he sold 1,200,000 copies of his album "De niña a mujer", in only six months.
16. Broke a record in Brasil, where his album "De niña a mujer" went multiple-platinum, with more than 2,000,000 copies sold in eleven months.
17. In 1983 entered the Guinness book of World Records, for having sold the most records in the most languages in history.
18. The international news agencies highlighted his concert in front of 170,000 people in O'Higgins park in Santiago in Chile, considered the largest audience in South America for a similar event.
19. His album "La Carretera", made him the first Spanish artist to reach Platinum as a result of only one day of sales.
20. In June, he returned to Las Vegas after a two-year absence, with two performances at the Las Vegas Hilton. The seats were sold out two months before the concerts and the promoters of the performances allowed standing-room-only tickets to be sold, a unique case for the concerts of an artist in Las Vegas.
21. Currently, Julio Iglesias is the latin artist who has sold more records in history (300 million).
22. On November 22nd 2011, the album Julio Iglesias "1" is released in Spain and it immediately gets the first position on iTunes. The album got the Platinum record in Brazil and the Diamond record in Colombia.
23. In 2013 Julio Iglesias received the Guinness World Records for the Best-selling Male Latin Artist.
24. Julio Iglesias was born as Julio José Iglesias de la Cueva.
25. Iglesias was born Julio Jose Iglesias de la Cueva on September 23, 1943 in Madrid.
26. He is the son of Julio Iglesias, Sr., a medical doctor from Ourense who became one of the youngest gynecologists in the country, and María del Rosario de la Cueva y Perignat.
27. Iglesias' paternal ancestry comes from Galicia, his paternal grandparents were named Manuela Puga Noguerol and Ulpiano Iglesias Sarria.
28. His maternal grandparents were José de la Cueva y Orejuela (1887-1955), and Dolores de Perignat y Ruiz de Benavides, who was a native of Puerto Rico.
29. Iglesias is of Jewish ancestry from his maternal side, having mentioned his mother's name "de la Cueva y Perignat" (literally "of the cave"), referring to Jewish people in hiding, is a very common Jewish name.
30. He alternated playing professional football with studying law at the CEU San Pablo University in Madrid.
31. In the earliest years of his young adulthood, he was a goalkeeper for Real Madrid Castilla.
32. His professional football career ended when he had a serious car accident, due to which he was unable to walk for two years. Afterwards, he said of those years, "I had more courage and attitude than talent."
33. During his hospitalization after the accident, a nurse gave him a guitar that he might have something to do with his hands. In learning to play, he discovered his musical talent.
34. After his rehabilitation, Iglesias studied for three months at Bell Educational Trust's Language School in Cambridge, UK.
35. After that, he went back to obtain his law degree at Complutense University of Madrid.
36. In 1968 he won the Benidorm International Song Festival, a songwriter's event in Spain, with the song "La vida sigue igual" (meaning "Life Goes On The Same") which was used in the film La vida sigue igual, about his own life.
37. After this event he signed a deal with Discos Columbia, the Spanish branch of the Columbia Records company and released his first studio album titled "Yo Canto" (I Sing).
38. He represented Spain in the 1970 Eurovision Song Contest, finishing in fourth place, behind Ireland's winning entry performed by Dana.
39. Shortly after he had a number one hit in many European countries with "Un Canto A Galicia", sung in Galician, in honour of his father, who hailed from Galicia. That single sold 1 million copies in Germany.
40. In 1975 he found success in the Italian market by recording a song exclusively in Italian called "Se mi lasci non vale" ("If You Leave Me, It Can't Be"). Notable albums from this decade are A Flor de Piel (1974, with the European hit "Manuela"), "El Amor", and "Soy".
41. He also sang in French. One of his popular songs is "Je n'ai pas changé".
42. In 1979 he moved to Miami, Florida, in the United States, signed a deal with CBS International, and started singing in different languages such as English, French, Portuguese, German and other languages to his music.
43. Iglesias released the album, De Niña a Mujer, dedicated to his daughter (who shared the cover photo with him), from it came the first English-language hit, a Spanish cover of "Begin the Beguine" which became number 1 in the United Kingdom; he also released a collection, Julio.
44. In 1984, he released 1100 Bel Air Place, the hit album which established him as a star in the English-speaking entertainment industry. It sold over three million albums in the United States alone.
45. On 29 January 1971 Iglesias married María Isabel Preysler Arrastía, better known as Isabel Preysler, a Filipina journalist and television host.
46. Preysler is a Filipino of Spanish ancestry and member of the wealthy and aristocratic Perez de Tagle family, a Filipino cadet branch of the Spanish dynasty that has held the Marquisate of Altamira since the 1600s.
47. Together, they had three children: Chabeli Iglesias, a Spanish socialite; Julio Iglesias, Jr., a Spanish singer; and Enrique Iglesias, an internationally well-known Spanish singer-songwriter, actor, and record producer.
48. In the 1970s Iglesias and his family were extensively depicted on the front pages of international newspapers and magazines. The marriage of Iglesias and Preysler ended in divorce in 1979.
49. After his divorce, Iglesias lived together with the 23 years younger Dutch model Miranda Rijnsburger, whom he married on 26 August 2010 in a small church in Marbella, Spain.
50. They had five children: Miguel Alejandro, Rodrigo, the twins Cristina and Victoria, and Guillermo.
Source: facebook.com/julioiglesias, julioiglesias.com, Wikipedia.org
