 Julio Iglesias, is a Spanish singer and songwriter who has been awarded with the Guinness record thrice. In 1983, he was the most recorded artist in more languages in the world, and in 2013 as the Latin artist who has sold the most records in history. He is recognized as the most successful European commercial singer in the world until today day. He is one of the top ten record sellers in music history, having sold more than 300 million of his 80 albums edited worldwide to date in 14 languages. More than 2,600 certified gold and platinum albums. It is estimated that during his career he has offered more than 5,000 concerts, serving more than 60 million people on five continents. In April 2013 the singer was awarded in Beijing as the first and most popular international artist in China. He is also the largest foreign record seller in Brazil, France, Romania and Italy, among many others. In his country, Spain, is the artist who has sold the most, with 23 million records. Julio Iglesias has won the most important and prestigious awards in the recording industry such as the Grammy and Latin Grammy, World Music Award, Billboard Awards, Silver Goal, ASCAP, American Music Award and Lone Wastro Awards among others. He has been awarded the gold medal for merit in the fine arts of Spain and the Legion of Honor of France. He was named special ambassador for the performing arts of UNICEF in 1989. He has also institutionalized September 8 as Julio Iglesias Day in Miami since 1997 and has been a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame since 1985. April 2013, entered the Hall of Fame of the Latin Composers. Early Life Iglesias was born on September 23, 1943 in Madrid. He is the son of Julio Iglesias, Sr., a medical doctor from Aurens who became one of the youngest gynecologists in the country, and Maria del Rosario de la Cueva y Periñat, 1919-2002. Iglesias's paternal ancestry comes from Galicia, his paternal grandparents were named Manuela Pugna-Garal and El Piano Iglesias Seria. His maternal grandparents were José de la Cueva y Aureuela, 1887-1955, and Dolores de Periñat y Ruiz de Benavidez, who was a native of Puerto Rico. The name Iglesias translates as Churches, likewise, Iglesias's of Jewish ancestry from his maternal side, having mentioned that his mother's family name, de la Cueva y Periñat, meaning literally of the cave, referring to Jewish people in hiding, is a very common Jewish name. He alternated playing professional football with studying law at the CEU San Pablo University in Madrid. In the earliest years of his young adulthood, he was a goalkeeper for Real Madrid Castillo. His professional football career was ruined when he was involved in a serious automobile 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.� These were sorely tested when he was involved in that car crash it smashed his lower spine, his legs were permanently weakened as a direct result, and they still required therapy several years later. During his hospitalization after the accident, a nurse gave him a guitar so that he could have something to do with his hands. In learning to play, he discovered his musical talent. After his rehabilitation, Iglesias studied for three months at Bell Educational Trusts Language School in Cambridge, UK. After that, he went back to obtain his law degree at Compluton's University of Madrid. Entertainment career In 1968 he won the Benadorm International Song Festival, a songwriter's event in Spain, with the song �La Vida Segigual�, meaning life goes on the same, which was used in the film �La Vida Segigual�, about his own life. After this event he signed a deal with Disco's Columbia, the Spanish branch of the Columbia Records Company, and released his first studio album, titled �Yo Canto�, or �I Sing They�. Album spent 15 weeks in the Spanish charts. And peaked at number 3.He represented Spain in the 1970 Eurovision Song Contest, finishing in fourth place behind Ireland's winning entry, performed by Dana. His entry was the song �Güendolin�. Shortly after, he had a number one hit in many European countries with �Un Canto�� Galicia, sung in Galician, in honour of his father, who hailed from Galicia. That single sold one million copies in Germany. In 1975 he found success in the Italian market by recording a song exclusively in Italian, called �S'e Mi La Si Non Vale,� or �If You Leave Me, It Can�t Be. Notable albums from this decade are �A Floor De Peel�, 1974, with the European hit �Manuela�, �El Amor�, 1975, and �Soy�, 1973. He also sang in French, one of his popular songs in this language became �Jenaipa Change�. 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. Two years later, in 1981, he released the album �Denina Amú Herr�, which he dedicated to his daughter. She shared the cover photo with him. From it came the first English-language hit of his career, a Spanish cover of �Begin the Begin� which became number one in the United Kingdom, he also released a collection, Julio, 1983. In 1984, he released 1100 Bell 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.The first single, to all the girls I�ve loved before, a duet with Willie Nelson, hit number one on the country charts and went top five in the Billboard Hot 100. It also featured all of you, in vocal duet with Diana Ross, a top 20 pop hit, that climbed to number two on the adult contemporary chart with the help of a popular video. In 1984, he had recorded and released the previously mentioned duets with Diana Ross and Willie Nelson. Iglesias won a Grammy Award for Best Latin Pop Album in the 1988 Grammy Awards for the album �Un hombre solo, a man alone.� He recorded a duet with Stevie Wonder on My Love, in his non-stop album, a crossover success in 1988. In the 1990s Iglesias returned to his original Spanish melody in Tango, 1996, nominated for Best Latin Pop Album at the 1998 Grammy Awards, losing to the Romances album by Mexican singer, Luis Miguel. Iglesias made a cameo appearance as himself on The Golden Girls as Sofia Petrillo�s date on St. Valentine�s Day 1989. In 2003, Julio released his album Divorcio, Divorce. In its first day of sales, Divorcio sold a record 350,000 albums in Spain, and reached the number one spot on the charts in Spain, Portugal, France, Italy and Russia. In 2003 and 2004, aided by the success of his Divorcio album, Iglesias went on a ten-month world tour which took him from Europe to Asia and then on to North America, South America and Africa. More than half the shows on that tour sold out within days of going on sale. In December 2004, his Dutch girlfriend Miranda Reinsberger and Iglesias himself recorded a duet of the Christmas song Silent Night. The song, which was not officially released, also included a voice message from Iglesias, Reinsberger and therefore young children of that time. The song was released online through the singer�s official website and a CD was included on their Christmas card as a holiday gift from the Iglesias family to their friends and fans around the world. In 2008, Iglesias recorded another song as a gift to his fans. The family recorded the little drummer boy in Spanish and English and included it in the family�s Christmas card. Iglesias also made investments in the Dominican Republic�s eastern town of Punta Cana, a major tourist destination, where he took to spending most of the year. Indeed, Iglesias became a Dominican citizen in 2005. In September 2006, Iglesias released a new English language album, which he titled �Romantic Classics I�ve Chosen Songs� from the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s that I believe will come to be regarded as the new standards,� Iglesias stated in the album Sleeve Notes. The album featured his interpretations of foreigners I want to know what love is, �The Wham!� Selection Careless Whisper, and Richard Marks� Right Here Waiting. Romantic Classics was Iglesias� highest debut on the Billboard charts, entering at No. 31 in the United States, 21 in Canada, 10 in Australia, and top spots across Europe and Asia. He returned to the studio to record songs in Filipino and Indonesian for his Asian releases of Romantic Classics which helped propel record sales in the Asian entertainment industry. Iglesias promoted Romantic Classics in 2006, it was seen all over the world on television shows. In the United States, for example, he appeared on Dancing with the Stars, where he sang his version of �I Want to Know What Love Is, Good Morning America, The View, Fox and Friends, and Martha Stewart. In 2008, Iglesias made a music video with Gulnara Karimova, the daughter of Uzbek dictator Islam Karamov. In March 2011, the artist launched a new studio album called One Or A Number One. Iglesias� performance of the song La Mer, The Sea, is featured in the soundtrack of the 2011 film Tinker, Taylor, Soldier, Spy � the performance comes from a live album, which had gone out of print by the last days of December 2015, that he recorded live at the Olympia Theater in Paris in 1976. At the beginning and the end of the recording, Iglesias introduces the song, and his backing musicians, in fluent French. In October 2012, Iglesias performed a concert in Equatorial Guinea, where tickets were reportedly $1,000 each. On April 1, 2013, in Beijing, he received two historic awards, first and most popular international artist of all time in China, an award given by Sony Music China and which was presented to Julio by the world-renowned Chinese artist Lang Lang, and the Guinness World Records for the best-selling male Latin artist. As Iglesias is a composer and lyricist, some of his songs being of his own authorship and composition, on April 23, 2013, he was inducted into the Latin Songwriters Hall of Fame, alongside Armando Manzanero and Jose Feliciano. In 2015, as was announced, Iglesias was slated to perform a concert, complete show, for the first time with his son Julio Iglesias, Jr. in a tour in Romania, on May 22 at Sala Polyvalent in Cluj-Napaca and July 2 at Sala Palachalui in the capital city, Bucharest. Personal Life On January 29, 1971 Iglesias married Maria Isabel Prasler Arascha, better known as Isabel Prasler, a Filipino journalist and television host. Prasler, a Filipino of Spanish ancestry, was also a member of the wealthy and aristocratic Perez de Tagol family, a Filipino cadet branch of the Spanish dynasty of nobility that had held the marquiset of Altamira since the 1600s. Together, the couple had three children, Ceble Iglesias, a Spanish socialite, Julio Iglesias, Jr., a Spanish singer, and Enrique Iglesias, an internationally well-known Spanish singer-songwriter, actor and record producer. In the 1970s, Iglesias and his family were extensively depicted on the front pages of international newspapers and magazines. Less fortunately, the marriage of Iglesias and Prasler ended in divorce in 1979. Whenever Iglesias was not on tour, he was known to spend the rest of his time at his Miami residence. He bought the home in 1978 for $650,000. The South Florida mansion on the exclusive, private, Indian Creek Island property was placed on the market in 2006 for a quoted $28 million, making it one of 10 most expensive homes in the South in 2006 according to Forbes magazine. After his divorce, Iglesias lived together with the 22-years-younger Dutch model Miranda Rheinsberger, B-1965, whom he married on August 26, 2010 in a small church in Marbella, Spain. They had five children, Miguel Alejandro Iglesias, Rodrigo Iglesias, twins Cristina and Victoria Iglesias, both born May 1, 2001, and Guillermo Iglesias. They took up residence in the Dominican Republic, where Iglesias had acquired ownership of several hotel complexes. Among his other possessions there was the Punta Cana International Airport, of which he had acquired joint ownership with other investors. Fashion designer Oscar de la Renta was also an investor. On December 19, 2005, Iglesias's father, Julio Iglesias Sr., died of a heart attack at the age of 90. A week before his death, it became known that the 42-year-old wife of Julio Iglesias Sr., Ronna Keith, was pregnant with their second child. Their first child, Jamie, was born on May 18, 2004. The second child, a daughter, Ruth, was born on July 26, 2006. In 2008, after his house in Indian Creek did not sell at his asking price, he ordered it raised and said he planned to build another on that lot. In 2012 he purchased the property next door for $15 million and announced that he planned to build a new home on the combined properties.