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Spanish court awards Shakira €55m over tax agency blunder
The Guardian
|May 19, 2026
A court has ordered Spain’s tax authority to pay Shakira more than €55m after ruling officials had wrongly imposed huge fines on the Colombian singer by making mistakes over her tax status.
Officials wrongly decided Shakira was resident in Spain, the court said
In a statement released yesterday, the national court in Madrid said it had accepted an appeal from Shakira against a fine she was handed five years ago when officials at the Spanish tax agency claimed she had not paid the necessary tax in Spain in 2011. At that time, the singer was in a relationship with the FC Barcelona player Gerard Piqué.
The court said the agency had failed to prove that Shakira, 49, had spent more than 183 days in Spain that year, which would have obliged her to pay personal income tax.
This story is from the May 19, 2026 edition of The Guardian.
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