David and Victoria Beckham They spent four years in Spain in the early 2000s. The arrival of one of the most famous couples in the world sparked a media persecution that led to a crisis in the marriage.
The signing of Real Madrid for David Beckham It had a dimension that reached far beyond the world of football. His move to Spain between 2003 and 2007 collapsing magazine covers, television talk shows… The boys wanted to wear the same hairstyle as the player and the young girls wanted to replicate the style of the former Spice Girl.
They were popular, yes, but they were not always spoken well of. The tabloids uncovered alleged infidelities, information – true or not – that was terribly juicy. The precedent was obvious: OK magazine had paid one million euros for the exclusive of their wedding in 2009. Victoria chose a strapless design by Vera Wang valued at 90,000 euros.
His arrival in Spain, without understanding the language and with the press behind him
“When I moved to Spain it was difficult, because I had been part of a club and a family all my life, from the age of 15 to 27. They sold me overnight. Suddenly I’m in a city, I don’t speak the language. And most importantly, I didn’t have my family“recalls the player of his signing for Real Madrid in June 2003.
His Netflix documentary provides a sincere testimony about his childhood, his career through various football clubs, his years in Spain and his most personal habits, such as the scrupulous order he maintains at home.
The media persecution that was already brutal in England became unsustainable in Spain. There was a lot of questioning why it took Victoria so long to move to Spain, to which she now responds: “I told David: ‘We have nowhere to live, no school.’. His arrival was tremendously publicized: “He arrived in the city as if he were the president of the United States.”
“We had to think about the family. I had two children. And that is what many did not take into account. When they criticized me for not going to Spain from the first moment, I could not move until I had a school in Brooklyn. But they made it all up and took it out of context. He never went to Spain“he details.
“I never said that Spain smelled like garlic”
That Vogue magazine titled an interview with Victoria that the model hated Spain because it “smelled of garlic” was the push that turned what had initially been admiration into rejection. The former Spice Girl became the public enemy of an entire country.
“I was the villain. They said I hated Spain and that it smelled like garlic. I never said that,” she says, very bluntly.
Crisis in your marriage
The big difference when it came to facing the media siege was that until that moment they had always been together in the face of that adversity, but with David in Madrid and Victoria in the United Kingdom things became complicated. The media -and supposed- iThe footballer’s infidelity with his former personal assistant, Rebecca Loosl, It didn’t help improve the situation.
“It was the most difficult time for us. Because it seemed like everyone was against us. And if I’m honest, we were at odds. Until Madrid, it was us against everyone, but we were together; We had each other. But in Spain we didn’t have each other. And that’s sad. You have no idea how difficult it was. And how it affected me,” says Victoria.
David suffered from the helplessness of not being able to control what happens. “Every time we got up there was something more. And we both felt not only that we were losing each other, but that we were drowning. Watching her suffer was incredibly difficult. But we are fighters. And in that time we need to fight for each other and our family. And what we had was worth fighting for. But, in the end, it is our private life,” says the footballer.
They narrate their stay in Spain as a true nightmare, a hell that finally did not end with them. a marriage united for more than 14 years.
