Gerard Pique is “very annoyed” after being given “days’ notice” by ex Shakira that she is moving to Miami this week with their two children so they can start school there on April 11.
Vanitatis reported on Friday the singer-songwriter would be leaving Barcelona to start her new life in the States with her parents and sons Milan, 10, and Sasha, 8, before the end of this coming week.
Overnight Shakira experts Lorena Vasquez and Laura Fa, who report regularly on the mum-of-two for Catalan newspaper El Periodico, said the artist’s lawyer Pilar Mane had told Pique’s lawyer Ramon Tamborero in a formal announcement she was leaving definitively. They said Shakira, 46, had phoned the former Barcelona defender to confirm the news.
Neither of the couple’s lawyers could be reached for comment on Sunday. Pique was said to be furious and in the dark still about exactly which day they will be flying to the States.
Fa and Vazquez said: “He is very annoyed because he has been told with very little time. He disagrees with the children not finishing the school year in Barcelona.”
April 11 is the day US school kids will return to classes after the spring break.
The Barcelona-based journalists had identified April 1 as the date Shakira would leave Spain with her children after suspending earlier plans to travel at the start of the year because of the poor health of her 91-year-old dad William Mubarak. That was before her mum Nidia Ripoll was hospitalised in the Catalan capital after a blood clot was found in her leg.
Shakira and Pique, who split last May after 11 years together, confirmed in November they had reached an agreement after a protracted negotiation which came to a head with a marathon 12-hour meeting with their lawyers. They signed the accord at a court in Barcelona the following month.
As part of the agreement Pique, now dating 24-year-old Catalan Clara Chia, will spend holiday time with his children. Shakira’s wish to move to Miami, where she used to live and part of her family are based, is understood to have been the principal sticking point in the former couple’s previous failure to strike an out-of-court settlement.
The artist, who has relatives and several close friends in Miami, owns a £14 million mansion in the city she is said to have put up for sale in 2018 before removing it from the market a few months ago. Late last month Spanish media claimed Shakira may have found love with a new man in Miami.
The former Barcelona defender’s relationship with Clara Chia, who has just turned 24, emerged shortly after he and Shakira announced their split. The singer-songwriter performed her diss track with Argentinian DJ Bizarrap, in which she fires poisoned darts at Pique and his new girlfriend, on the Jimmy Fallon late-night show last month. She went on to talk about her break-up with the former footballer.
Pique said in a subsequent interview with Spanish newspaper El Pais he was “very happy” following the dramatic changes in his life which have included the split with Shakira and retirement from football. He also shut down a question about Shakira in the interview but added: “Each parent has the responsibility to try to do the best for their children. It’s about protecting them. That’s the work of all parents with their children. That’s what I’m focused on and that’s my job as a father.”
Pique’s lawyer said in February, in his first public comments about the couple’s divorce negotiations: “They have made a great effort for the good of their children, making sure they weren’t the protagonists. Both of them have shown great intelligence.”
In a surprise interview with respected Catalan daily La Vanguardia, 74-year-old father-of-two Mr Tamborero admitted of the talks that resulted in the agreement: “It required seven months of negotiations. The agreement was complex and required preparatory meetings. And the decisive reunion before the signing lasted 13 hours.”
