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Changing Course
During my recuperation, I listened to music on the radio. When my father's medical assistant gave me a guitar so I could practice moving my fingers, I started strumming the instrument. I played by ear. One day I wrote my own song, "La Vida Sigue Igual" ("Life Goes On"), and when I sang it for my father, he said, "Great! That's a beautiful song." Then, after I learned about a national singing competition in Spain, I said to him, "I'm going to enter it."He was cautious. Music as a career was still completely foreign to him. He didn't think I would ever become a professional singer; no one in my family did. But he didn't say no. He gave me his permission. And in July 1968, when I was almost 25 years old, I entered the contest and sang the ballad I had written.
And I won.
I recorded the song, and soon I started to hear myself singing all over the radio. It was unbelievable. My father said, "Well, Julio, you can sing and play music for a year, and then you can resume your law career." Of course, this is not what happened! I found myself with a recording contract, and my song became a No. 1 hit in my country.
For my father, Sinatra had always been the biggest singer in the world. Now I took that spot in his eyes.
He traveled with me to a lot of my concerts. He would tell me things other people wouldn't, like if I seemed tired. "You need more rest," he would say. "You're working too much." He always had my back. I suppose for some people this could be too close for comfort, but for me it was invaluable. My father was being true to me. I trusted him.
Then came the terrible day he was suddenly taken away from me.
By now he had gone back to work at his thriving medical clinic in Madrid. But one day in December 1981, when he was 66 years old, he was kidnapped at gunpoint by a terrorist group in Spain. Two men forced him out of his clinic, put him in a car and threatened to kill him unless they received $2 million in ransom. He was targeted for the money, that much was clear.
My family kept in constant touch with the police, trying to figure out where my father was, whether he was even still alive and how to handle everything. It was a horrible experience, something most people just read about in the headlines or see on TV. But for us, it was real, and it was agonizing. After 19 days -- and one day before we were going to pay the money -- the Spanish police rescued him. They dynamited their way into the terrorists' hideout in the small northeastern village of Trasmoz, about 250 miles from Madrid, and found my father.
It was 3 a.m. He had been asleep and was physically unharmed. They arrested his four captors and got him out, but he was severely traumatized. The kidnappers had told him repeatedly that they were going to kill him. I remember him crying every day for a year. He had terrible panic attacks; he could not walk on the streets because of his paranoia. This went on for a long time.
Finally, my father quit his profession for good. He changed course -- it was like he was born again, you know? He saw that he had a new chance to live and wanted to make the most of it. He began touring with me once more, to China, Finland, everywhere. He was close with my children, too, and encouraged Enrique in his singing career. My father also remarried -- he and my mother divorced in 1983 -- and had a new baby. He was a true survivor.
Last year he passed away, at age 90. My father led an incredible life, and he changed my destiny. I'm very happy to think that in my own, perhaps surprising way, I gave him a lot of happiness as well.
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