Shakira has addressed her headline-making split from soccer star Gerard Piqué and his cheating allegations for the first time. In a new interview with the Mexican outlet Canal Estrellas, Shakira directed a pointed comment at Clara Chia Marti, Piqué’s 23-year-old new girlfriend, with whom he recently went Instagram-official.
“There is a place in hell reserved for women who don’t support other women,” the global music superstar said (per The Daily Mail), echoing Madeleine Albright and, notoriously, Taylor Swift.
News broke last June that Shakira and Piqué, who share two children but never married, were separating after 11 years together amid rumors that the former Manchester United player had been unfaithful.
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In the aftermath, Shakira released a scorching breakup track called “BZRP Music Session #53” that includes the lyrics, “You left me with my mother-in-law as a neighbor/ With the press at my door, and in debt with the government/ You thought you hurt me, but you made me stronger.”
“Someone should have taken a picture of how I started and how I finished the session with Bizarrap,” Shakira told Canal Estrellas of the song. “It was an outlet for my healing process. My lyrics are more effective than a visit to a psychologist.”
And though things have seemingly been quite turbulent for Shakira as of late—she’s also dealing with ongoing charges of tax fraud—she seems to be reveling in the realization that she can be totally “self-sufficient.”
“I bought that story, that a woman needed a man to complete herself,” she said. “I’ve always been emotionally quite dependent on men, I’ve fallen in love with love, and I think I’ve been able to understand that story from another perspective… and today I am sufficient on my own. When a woman has to face life’s battles she comes out stronger.”
She can at least take comfort in knowing that her fans are on her side: Earlier this month, a TikTok claiming that Piqué and Marti were ejected from a restaurant in Barcelona because the owner is a huge Shakira fan went viral.
