Beatriz Cortázar paints the best portrait of Julián Muñoz, the mayor who blocked the streets so Isabel Pantoja could go shopping

It was at the height of his romance with the singer Isabel Pantoja. We met at a restaurant in La Moraleja, one of those that fills up with executives at midday and leaves you with a shivering credit card. My friend and I sat at a table and as soon as we picked up the menu we both got up to greet different people. She went straight to ESTHER Koplowitz who was two tables to the right. I approached her when I saw Isabel Pantoja and Julián Muñoz eating in the same room. After the usual greetings my friend and I returned to the table and prepared to taste those dishes and catch up. But when it was time to pay the waiter arrived with a surprise. We were invited. We immediately began to deduce who the generous one was. She thought that her friend Koplowitz had been thoughtful. I was convinced that she was right. Until the waiter himself cleared up our doubts minutes later: it had been Julián Muñoz. What happened was that they had already left and we couldn’t thank them.

This simple anecdote reflects very well how Muñoz behaved when he was with Isabel Pantoja and without going to jail. Shortly after, he became a kind of manager or filter for the singer and that is why when he went to interview her, Julián was always nearby and I don’t know exactly what he was doing, but he was supposedly working for her.

At that time, Julián was a nice guy, one of those who always called you on Christmas Eve to wish you a happy holiday and who boasted of having a gift for people. That was when he was in a good mood. I also knew the other side, without Pantoja, with the whole scandal of Operation Malaya, with one foot almost in jail, and also with the other foot out of prison. That is why, talking about Julián is talking about two or more people at the same time. Depending on the moment and the woman. The Julián who pulled up his pants below his chest and said he dressed like Julio Iglesias and even blocked the streets so that Pantoja could go shopping in Marbella had nothing to do with the Julián who only felt rejection towards Isabel and blamed her for all his troubles. Because of her, he broke up with a family, abandoned his daughters and strutted around the world.

Cachuli wanted to be Julio Iglesias

Cachuli, as he was known in his village, really believed he was Julio Iglesias. But then came the lean years, the sentences, his imprisonment, his releases for health reasons, the trials and even the reunion with a family that wanted to forgive him when he once swore at Pantoja. Because Isabel’s shadow has always been very long in Julián’s life. The singer broke up with him during one of his visits to prison, when she found out that there were some bank transfers to his ex-wife Maite Zaldívar, and she did not want to go through that anymore.

Until then, she had been in a strange relationship that only brought her problems and trouble, and even a prison sentence, even though the sentence was for two years and she had no criminal record. But justice wanted her case to be exemplary, and Pantoja went to prison, as did Maite Zaldívar and, of course, Julián Muñoz.

Julian has died and many enigmas remain in a biography that ends in an almost bizarre way with a new marriage with his ex Mayte, who in turn is still with Fernando, her boyfriend of the last 20 years. His relatives say that it was a matter of love and affection, but come on, what a romantic novel does not fit into a story where the garbage bags arrived at his house full of money and as far as we know they have not been returned where they should have been. There are unsolved mysteries and there are more doubts than beliefs in a surreal marriage that could only be explained to obtain the benefits that a widow gets when she reaches that state. The day before his death, Julian gathered everyone in the hospital: his ex and new wife, her eternal boyfriend, his ex girlfriend from Gibraltar, the daughters… Isabel Pantoja was not there nor was he expecting, the common enemy that reunited the family that today mourns the loss of a man who has marked the social and prison chronicle of recent years.