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There are two things in the universe that are never destroyed, but are transformed: energy and Julio Iglesias.

Julio has achieved such omnipresence that he now only admits mystical or philosophical explanations, such as comparing him to the fullness of the void indicated by Buddhism or to Nietzsche's idea of ​​the eternal return.

There is a Julio

: in the 70s he was a dapper idol for mature ladies, and in the 80s the ultimate expression of the Latin lover who sold more records than fathered children;

Currently, Julio's continuous metamorphosis

, photos on social networks, jokes and views on YouTube.

July is forever.

By the mid-'80s, Julio was

rubbing shoulders with Michael Jackson and Elton John on the sales charts, who had to live in Papua New Guinea to stay oblivious to his tan image.

Julio was an archetype: dressed in a tuxedo or white linen trousers, without socks or with a handkerchief in his pocket, he conveyed

who had reached the pinnacle of glamour.

There is a very popular photo of him, which is quintessentially July, in which he has a pot of fried chicken next to him, but in reality what the Galician

has never forgiven is a seafood platter.

If he aspires to pleasure, Julius shows a path that he would envy even Epicurus.

In the mid-1980s, Julio

He sold two million copies of his first English-language album, 1100 Bel Air Place (1984), landed a huge sponsorship with Coca-Cola, embarked on a world tour, and garnered the support of pillars of social, artistic, and political life such as President

(and his wife

, who was the real fan), Kirk Douglas or the journalist Johnny Carson.

It is not that he was the first Spaniard to achieve such a feat, it is that no Anglo-Saxon had achieved it, at least since the days of classic cinema, personified in

and

.

With all the doors closed, Julio stormed paradise.

How did he happen, how did he get it?

This is the starting question that the indie musician, producer and philosophy professor

asked himself when he came across a 1984 video on YouTube in which Julio Iglesias, dressed in Marbella style, sang a duet with country legend

at a charity festival in the heart of the American West.

Musically, Laguna couldn't be further removed from Julio's light song—he's currently a guitarist on tour with

—but like anyone with a modicum of curiosity, he's reluctant to stick to cliché or caricature.

To the top of

You don't get there just any old way, behind Julio's American adventure there is a story that is known on the surface, but deep down is largely unknown, so he decided to snoop around.

What he found was a story as intoxicating as it was excessive.

The result is

(Contra, 2022), a book of more than 400 pages -and a hundred photos that would deserve to hang in the Reina Sofía- that

the most successful incursion of a Spaniard across the pond since Pizarro.

A valuable work because it finds a very healthy balance

of the Julio Iglesias phenomenon through the tools of sociology, musicology and hermeneutics.

In other words, at the same time that the marketing operation that lifted Julio to the Olympus of yuppie America is put together in detail, Laguna also delves into the power of Iglesias's message:

of a mischievous and somewhat cynical winner, and also what he hides, which are his insecurities, his narcissism, his dry skin and the equine depression that, as he confessed to

In 1985 -the mythical headline that still circulates on the networks, "I had to choose either

"-, he suffered after having completed his feat and left empty.

He was already known throughout the world, he had a fortune, women, cars, the permanent attention of hundreds of millions of people (Julio says "people" a lot).

And after that?

Laguna's story is divided into three blocks alternated with digressions on what is known about Julio Iglesias and his sexual and hedonistic life.

At the end of the 70s, and after a triumphant decade in which he had become

Julio Iglesias was a celebrity of the romantic song in several territories outside the Anglo-Saxon orbit.

Methodical and tireless,

singing in French, Italian or Portuguese, and nailed a pike in Asia -at the beginning of the 80s he was already a star in Japan- as he had done before in South America.

It was then that Madrid was too small for him and he settled in Miami, in his luxurious Indian Creek mansion.

In Florida, he asked himself the key question: how to

, how to please the public of the United States as if he were one of them.

At that time, Julio had acceptable sales figures in the Yankee market, but mainly among the Latin public.

No cowboy from Texas would buy a record of his, no one would be willing to accept that Spaniard with the cracked skin as an equal.

But he had

: although he did not sweep the United States, Julio Iglesias was the artist who sold the most records in the world, adding peripheral markets, and his company, CBS, was aware of the money he generated.

Thus,

between the label, his booking agency, William Morris, and his public relations office, Rogers & Cowan, to convince the American public that they were missing out on the greatest artist on the planet, and that they should sign up for the Iglesias fashion.

Any strategy was valid, from

- Julio had been separated from Isabel Preysler for a long time, he did not present any official girlfriend, but a woman passed by his bed every night and it was dropped that he could have had affairs with pop myths like

and

- even looking for spaces for it in television programs, articles in the serious press and strategically placed marquees to make it clear that it was an unstoppable phenomenon, an open secret.

He had something valuable to offer.

It was

between moisturizing image - the myth of the Latino lover was still alive in the American imagination, and he had no problem cultivating that image of

Time magazine called it "the sex symbol of menopause" - and a product that did not meet the requirements of

, but that appealed to a public willing to accept the fantasy of the mansion, the Rolls Royce and the big bed with petals. pink

The culmination of all this was an album with kitschy cameos, a synth-heavy production, Julio's echoing vibrato that sounds like he's

and then a tour that didn't leave a single seat unsold.

With work, marketing, careful aesthetics and a lot of power of suggestion, a man won - "Julio, you're the fucking master", that acrostic said - and then discovered that,

, because there is no room for no one else.

Since then, Julio has not been able to go further, because he did everything the first time.

The book tells an incredible story not because of how he was, but because he can never get over himself.

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