The media resurgence of Julián Muñoz in his hardest personal moment

The return of the former mayor of Marbella to the media, thanks to the documentary that he stars in on Telecinco, comes at his worst personal moment, after learning that his youngest daughter, Elijah has cancer.

The news was confirmed this week by his mother, Maite Zaldivar, who preferred to “end speculation and rumors about a disease that has left us all devastated.” Elia, 40, married and mother of a girl, has already received the first chemotherapy session and the family hopes that the results of the treatment will be encouraging.

According to Maite, “it is in the best hands, in those of one of the best oncologists in Spain”, who works at the Costa del Sol public hospital, located in the city of Marbella.

It is not the only health setback that the family has suffered in recent years. Elia herself was blinded by a virus that woke up after the stress caused by the media and judicial ordeal that happened as a result of the Malaya case.

What if the multiple incurable pathologies suffered by Julián Muñoz, which allowed him to leave prison before completing his 20-year sentence, are the cause of his extreme thinness, it is not for the life of any of them that, three months ago, the Muñoz-Zaldívar prayed.

Thus, it is not surprising that in the circumstances in which the interview with Julián Muñoz was filmed, conducted by Paloma García-Pelayo and Santi Acosta, the former mayor wanted to sing the “mea culpa”, pay tribute to his daughters, be ashamed of his love for the tonadillera and regret his behavior as mayor and the damage caused to his family, including his ex-wife, Maite Zaldívar.

His years in prison

The documentary begins with a reading of what the former mayor wrote during his time in prison: some handwritten notes to which Julián Muñoz himself puts his voice and in which the evolution of his feelings is evident.

Of the love and passion that he felt for Isabel Pantoja and that he describes as an addiction, to the pain and disappointment that it meant for him to realize that the tonadillera, in reality, did not love him:

“I became obsessed with her, 24 hours a day thinking about her, it was an addiction and that ended up destroying me.”

Rereading his writings, the former GIL deputy cannot avoid being ashamed:”It makes me feel ashamed and angry to have loved a person so much”. The ex-convict reveals that he came to “marry” Isabel Pantoja using his prerogatives as mayor:

“As then, being mayor, I could celebrate ceremonies. One day, being in the room, we signed a document stating that we were married. I don’t know where that paper is, and I don’t care either.”

Although the link had no legal validity, it is further proof of the love he then felt for Isabel Pantoja, his gypsy.

He assures that everything he did then against Jesús Gil, who was mayor of Marbella between 1991 and 2002, it was a consequence of deification:

“With Isabel Pantoja I felt like a God”. Muñoz continues to maintain the same exculpatory speech regarding the crime of money laundering that landed the two women in his life, Maite and Isabel, in jail: “Isabel was very expensive, but I am not to blame for having gone to jail”.

Even so, he denies having bought the two houses that the tonadillera came to have in his name in Marbella: “It could be considered a gift – he acknowledges – the discount I got him from Aifos, 50% on the purchase of the Guadalpín apartment”.

650 million pesetas

He ensures that Elizabeth insisted on buying “for his balls” the chalet in La Pera, the prestigious Marbella urbanization where the couple lived their romance, for 650 million pesetas, and that it was Manolo Calle who managed to get a mortgage from Banif for 100% of the capital.

In this matter, despite the contradictions that he maintains throughout the interview in which he refers to the mansion as “my house”, he maintains the same version that Isabel Pantoja offered in court.

And it is that, despite the crudeness with which he personally describes Kiko Rivera’s mother, but not that of his daughters, there are pacts that prevent him from telling the truth about money laundering that put him on the bench along with the singer, his daughter, his ex-wife, his ex-brother-in-law and some friends.

It will be in the second and last chapter, which will be broadcast next Friday, where he will delve into his role as mayor, which ended in August 2003, overthrown by a motion of censure by declaring war on Jesús Gil and Juan Antonio Roca, true architects of the plundering of the city of Marbella.

The political ambition of Julián Muñoz, spurred on by Isabel Pantoja, gave rise to the Malaya Case, which marked the beginning of the end of Gilism and an era of corruption on the Costa del Sol.