El dos de febrero/February 2nd

¡Feliz cumpleaños a ... Shakira*! (Shakira Isabel Mebarek Ripoli) (1977-     )

*AND to Gerard Piqué (1987-           ), her significant other since 2011 (and father of her two children -- Milan, born in January of 2013, and Sasha, born in January of 2015)

Shakira, Gerard Piqué and their children Milan and Sasha.
Photo from El País, Dec. 2016. Click HERE. 

Shakira most likely doesn't need an introduction. Number 27 on Fortune Magazine's 2017 list of "The World's Greatest Leaders," this Colombian singer has sold millions of records and won multiple awards, including four Grammys and 12 Latin Grammys. In 1997, she founded Pies Descalzos, an organization that aims to help poor children in Colombia, especially with education. Shakira, whose name in Arabic means "grateful" (her paternal grandparents immigrated to New York City, where her father was born, and her father moved to Colombia when he was five), is an only child, though she has eight half siblings through her father's first marriage (one of those siblings passed away in a motorcycle accident when Shakira was a child, click HERE to read more (in Spanish)). She was raised in Baranquilla, Colombia, where she wrote poetry, sang, and attended Catholic schools (where she did not sing in the choir, as she was told she "sounded like a goat" - click HERE to hear her speak (in Spanish) about this on El Show de Cristina). At 16, she won third place for her song Eres at the Viña del Mar International Song Festival (click HERE to see the performance by the future star - at minute 1:50 of the video). Two studio albums followed, Magia and Peligro, neither of which were commercially successful. She became famous with Pies Descalzos in 1996, and then ¿Dónde Están Los Ladrónes? in 1998. Laundry Service, her first album in English, followed in 2001. Her next three albums (Fijación Oral/Oral Fixation, She Wolf, and Sale el Sol) were released while she was dating Antonio de la Rúa, oldest son of Argentine President (1999-2001) Fernando de la Rúa. The two were together for 11 years and founded Fundación ALAS, a non-profit that works to promote early childhood development. In 2010, while making the video for her World Cup song Waka Waka, Shakira met professional soccer player Gerard Piqué, who appeared in the video. After she and Antonio de la Rúa had ended their relationship (or perhaps before; the press went crazy speculating here), Shakira began dating Piqué (whose birthday is also February 2nd, as noted above). The couple have two children together, Milan, born January 22nd 2013, and Sasha, born January 29th, 2015. They live in Catalonia (Cataluña), Spain (outside Barcelona), where Piqué has been an adamant supporter of the Catalan Independence Movement (a stance for which he has been harshly criticized by the Spanish public). In this video from the fall of 2017, he tearfully speaks of how his Catalan identity is more important to him than his Spanish one ("Soy y me siento Catalan"). His mother, Montserrat (also the name of a famous pilgrimage site in Catalonia, click HERE to read more (in Spanish)), is the director of a prestigious spinal cord injuries hospital in Barcelona and the daughter of former Barcelona Vice-President Amador Bernabeu. There were rumors of the two splitting in the fall of 2017, the couple has adamantly denied them. See them arriving at the Barcelona airport together after a vacation in New York City HERE and playing with their two adorable children in their Barcelona home HERE (second video is from the spring of 2017). Most recently, Shakira has been making the talk show rounds explaining how her new song Me Enamoré (I Fell In Love) is about when she and Piqué met. Irregardless of her family life, Shakira continues to find one success after another. In January of 2018, she won a Grammy for "Best Latin Pop Album of the Year" for her 11th studio album, El Dorado. It is her second time winning this category.

Click HERE for a Webquest on Gerard Piqué (and Shakira) (La identidad personal y pública)