Shakira’s Triumph Tax Battle in Spain: A Timeline

Shakira met Barcelona defender Gerard Piqué while promoting her 2010 World Cup anthem, “Waka Waka (This Time for Africa).” 

In 2011, she would often travel to Spain to see her then-boyfriend, who was tied to the European country for work purposes. In an op-ed that she penned for El Mundo in 2024, she explained that her intention of traveling to Spain was to have a prosperous long-distance relationship, not because she had intentions of staying or having a “vocation of permanence.” Shakira gave birth to their first child Milan in 2013, and in 2015 to their second son, Sasha — both were born in Barcelona.

In 2012, the Colombian artist bought a house in Barcelona, and in 2015 she moved to Spain as an expatriate, declaring Spain as her place of residence for tax purposes. The artist paid approximately $25.68 million as a tax resident, which she claims is the full amount she owed.

After an 11-year relationship, Shakira and Piqué broke off their relationship in summer 2022, and the Colombian singer moved to Miami, where she currently resides with her children.

In 2018, Spanish prosecutors alleged that Shakira failed to pay about $14 million in taxes between 2012-2014, claiming that she spent more than half her time in Spain during those years, even though her official residence was then listed as the Bahamas. 

A person must spend at least six months (or 183 days) a year in the country to be considered a tax resident in Spain. 

In 2022, a Spanish judge approved a trial for the Colombian star, where she faced six counts of tax fraud, and if found guilty, she would face an eight-year prison sentence, plus a hefty fine. Shakira avoided going to trial, stating that she paid all that she owed in addition to $3 million in interest, per The Associated Press. 

“I didn’t spend 183 days per year at that time at all. I was busy fulfilling my professional commitments around the world,” the artist said in an interview with ELLE in 2022. “Second, I’ve paid everything they claimed I owed, even before they filed a lawsuit. So as of today, I owe zero to them. And finally, I was advised by one of the four biggest tax specialist firms in the world, PricewaterhouseCoopers, so I was confident that I was doing things correctly and transparently from day one.” 

The artist faced a second case of possible tax fraud for allegedly failing to pay $7.1 million in tax on her 2018 income. The action was tied to allegations that the singer used an offshore company based in a tax haven to avoid paying Spain’s income tax.

In a statement shared with Billboard in 2023, Shakira’s legal team said: “No notification has been received in Miami, the singer’s official address, about the lawsuit in relation to the 2018 financial year. Shakira’s legal team is focused on preparing for the trial regarding the 2012-2014 financial years, which will begin on 20 November.”

Fast forward to 2024, in the op-ed she wrote for El Mundo, the artist further clarifies that during her “Spanish decade” (approximately from 2012 and 2022), she worked and gave 120 concerts in 90 different cities between The Sun Comes Out World Tour in 2011 and El Dorado World Tour in 2018. However, she noted that her earnings consisted of what she earned before arriving in Spain and after leaving — not in between. “Everything I earned in those years was kept by the Spanish State,” she wrote.

In November 2023, the global star agreed to a last-minute deal with Spanish authorities on the first day of the tax fraud trial in Barcelona, answering “yes” to confirm her acknowledgement of six counts of failing to pay the Spanish government about $15.8 million in taxes between 2012 and 2014. Under the agreement, she also received a suspended three-year sentence and paid a $7.6 million fine.

Though she was determined to defend herself in trial, she decided to resolve the matter with the “best interest of my kids at heart who do not want to see their mom sacrifice her personal well-being in this fight.”

Almost one year after the settlement, Shakira wrote an 1,000-word op-ed for the Spanish newspaper El Mundo, where she decided to tell her side of the story — first and foremost, for the sake of her children. “I need them to know that I made the decisions I made to protect them, to be by their side and to get on with my life,” she explains. “Not out of cowardice or guilt […] If at that moment I made the decision to make a pact for my children, this time I made the decision to speak out, because it is what my conscience asks of me.” 

She also shared how Vivir para contarla, a memoir by Colombian novelist Gabriel García Márquez, inspired her to want to write her own story. “Well, in a similar way I ‘tell it to live,’ to be able to get my life back, so that no one writes my story for me. Just like with my songs, I sing to live peacefully again, to turn the page.”

On May 18, Spain‘s National Court has acquitted the Colombian star in the tax fraud case, ordering the government to return her 60 million euros ($69 million), concluding that Shakira did not meet the minimum residency requirement to be taxed in Spain during 2011.

In a statement, the singer’s lawyer, José Luis Prada, described the ruling as the end of “an eight-year ordeal” and stated that Shakira “had the strength and resources to see it through to the end” in a process that, he said, “suffocates many anonymous taxpayers who lack the resources to defend themselves.”

In her 2024 op-ed, the singer said “my love for Spain and my dear Spanish friends and family still endures, but not everything is the same. Sometimes commitment to the truth is more important than one’s own comfort.”

This fall, Shakira will have a 12-day residency from Sept. 12 to Oct. 11 at the custom-built Shakira Stadium in Madrid. The 50,000-capacity temporary venue in Spain was constructed for her 2026 Las Mujeres Ya No Lloran World Tour.