The magistrate terminates the investigation and considers “indicatively proven” that the singer “hit, threatened and financially suffocated” his ex-partner. The artist has appealed that decision before the Court of Cádiz
Two years after the ex-wife of Diego ‘El Cigala’ denounced the singer for hit her and mistreat her psychologically as wellthe court for violence against women number 1 of Jerez de la Frontera (Cádiz) has completed its investigation and has made a decision regarding the artist, as OPEN CASE, the investigation and events channel of Prensa Ibérica, has learned.
Judge Raquel López-Vizcaíno took a statement from the woman, who has two children in common with El Cigala, 5 and 6 years old, and who left his job and his family in Jerez to go live with the singer in the Dominican Republic and take care of the children there while he developed his artistic career. The magistrate has also taken into account the photos and WhatsApp conversations that she provided along with her complaint to prove the ill-treatment to which the artist subjected her for four years, according to his complaint, which advanced OPEN CASE. During the investigation of the case, the judge has also taken statements from several family and friends of the couplewhich have corroborated the victim’s complaint.
three crimes
With all these data and, after listening to El Cigala’s version, the judge has issued an order, which this medium has accessed, with which she concludes her investigation and in which she accuses the artist of three crimes after finding “reasonable evidence “of crime against him. Thus, she proposes that El Cigala be tried for a possible crime of habitual abuse against his ex-wife, another of continued harassment and a third of mistreatment, aggravated for the fact of having committed it in the family home.
“From the procedures carried out, it has been proven that during their relationship, Ramón Jiménez Salazar (El Cigala) addressed his partner with expressions such as ‘bitch, wretch, eat my shit, I shit on your dead’in the family home and in the presence of their minor children”, concludes the judge in her order. “In order to submit the will of his partner, the defendant suffocated her financially, depriving her of financial support for herself and her children“, Add.
“It has been indicatively proven that Ramón Jiménez Salazar (El Cigala) addressed his partner with expressions like ‘whore, wretch, eat my shit, I shit on your dead’… in the presence of their children,” the judge concluded.
The magistrate considers that there is evidence that El Cigala “threatened his partner with throw her out of the house and by taking away her children to get her to acquiesce to his requests” and “taking advantage of his economic superiority, he controlled the woman to prevent her from abandoning him and returning to Spain with her children”.
In addition, he accuses the artist of physically assaulting his ex-partner “between 2017 and 2020, with bumps and shakes“. The judicial resolution highlights four serious episodes of violence: the first of these took place in a room at the Guadalete de Jerez hotel, in 2017, during a discussion in which, according to the record, El Cigala “he gave him a slap” to his then wife.
Shortly after, in August of that same year, during a fight that the couple had at the Punta Cana airport, he “he took her by the arm and shook her strongly”. The third and most serious assault, according to the woman’s complaint, occurred in July 2018 in a hotel in Barcelona when “she reproached him for possible infidelity” and the singer responded by “giving him punches and kicks all over the body“. El Cigala’s ex-wife declared that the artist then had “serious drug problems” and they used to argue for that reason. During one of those discussions, in November 2020, he came to “grab her by the neck”as stated in the judge’s order.
denies the facts
El Cigala denies all the facts and has appealed the judge’s order before the Cádiz Court. A forensic medical team from the Comprehensive Assessment of Gender Violence Unit (UVIVG), belonging to the Institute of Legal Medicine and Forensic Sciences of Cádiz, examined the singer last August to determine if he presents the characteristics of an abuser. Before the doctor, El Cigala stated: “I have never laid a hand on him in my life to the mother of my children”. He blamed his ex-partner for the problems in their relationship and even assured that he was the victim: “I suffered psychological abuse (…) When I came back from a trip I wanted a good reception, but she only reproached me, said that I didn’t call her and threatened to destroy my career”.
The judge also ordered that UVIVG specialists interview El Cigala’s ex-wife. During the examination, the woman explained that she and her children “lived in a environment of drugs and fear” during his relationship with the artist. “He insulted me, he always threatened to leave me, if I didn’t do what he wanted he would leave. When he stood up to him, he attacked me (& mldr;). I it covered my injuries until they left me. He was very jealous, he controlled me in every way… He once hit me on the head with a loaf because he wore red lipstick and tight pants. At work level, he wouldn’t let me work, he wanted me there to take care of him, he is a macho gypsy (…) I have character, but I started to shut up so as not to fight.”
“I was going to take the children”
The ex-wife of El Cigala affirms that she decided to put an end to that situation when, in 2021, she suffered a health problem and had to return to Jerez to undergo surgery: “I had many calls and messages from him pressing me to return to Punta Cana. I was still recovering from the operation and he insulted me and said that as a gypsy I had to go with him to take care of himthat If I didn’t go with him, he was going to take the children from me.. I blocked him from my mobile”. He decided to report it: “I could no longer continue in that environment, above all I did not want that environment for my children, so I burst, I couldn’t take it anymore and I wanted to tell what was happening.”
With these two versions, the experts prepared a report and sent it to the judge in the case. In it they conclude that “the recognition made (to El Cigala and his ex-wife) does not provide enough data compatible with a process of gender violenceunderstood as the process of dominance of the man over his female partner, beyond the attacks that are the subject of the complaint”. Although the experts clarify that “the absence of a characteristic dynamic of gender violence does not exclude the possible occurrence of aggressive behaviors by part of the accused towards the complainant”.
Restraining order
The judge does see sufficient evidence against El Cigala and proposes to send him to trial. Until that moment arrives, the magistrate has decided to extend the restraining order that the singer has with respect to the woman, whose statement is, according to the Prosecutor’s Office, “coherent and seamless, extensive”and full of “essential details about the facts denounced and also peripherals and details that describe a situation of constant insults and contempt”. The Prosecutor’s Office and the judge believe that El Cigala subjected his ex-wife to “a situation of isolation and economic suffocation that caused her to return to Jerez with her family”.
The Prosecutor’s Office already alerted months ago in a letter from the “situation of vulnerability” suffered by the woman after denouncing the ill-treatment, “given the public dimension of the person being investigated and the environment that surrounds him”. He also warned about El Cigala’s attitude and his lack of repentance, after the artist’s entourage “attempted to coerce” the woman “to give up her complaint”.
In making her decision, the judge also took into account the whatsapp messages that El Cigala and his ex-partner exchanged during their relationship and that she provided as evidence, together with several photographs that the woman would have taken after being attacked by the artist and in which she has wounds on the face and arms.
In one of those conversations, dated 2019, the woman expressed herself like this in a message sent to her then partner: “Someone who loves you does not do what you did and you don’t even regret it. On top of that, I apologize, hoping that you would come back in you and you will reflect, but you don’t want to. Nobody knows, I’ve been wearing long sleeves until the bruises disappeared. And no one will know, it makes me very sad and very ashamed because there is no justification for what you did.”
016 is the hotline for victims of sexist violence.