María Jiménez, who died in the early hours of this Thursday in Seville at the age of 73, was not only in the news for her musical successes. The singer had an intense love life. She was married to the actor Pepe Sancho, with whom she had a tortuous relationship. They were married three times and she ended up publicly denouncing him on the program Lazos de Sangre in 2004 for mistreatment.
They crossed paths for the first time in a well-known restaurant in Madrid. “It was a crush, but then there were twenty stab wounds,” said the artist in one of her many interviews, in which she was asked insistently about a relationship marked by mistrust and toxicity.
They first married in 1980 and began raising a family. Sancho welcomed Rocío, the singer’s daughter, before starting their relationship, as if she were his. She gave him her last name. Later, a son would also arrive from her marriage, Alejandro Sancho.
However, the situation soon became sustainable. Suspicions of infidelities and fights ended up dynamiting the situation. They separated a year after the birth of their son.
Everything changed in January 1985, with the death of Rocío in a car accident. Her death plunged the singer into a severe depression and exacerbated her problems with alcohol. Sancho was a great support for her at that time and that approach brought them together again. On February 27, 1987, the second wedding arrived, including a third shortly after in Nepal.
But the couple’s problems reappeared. “He had me completely annulled. He led a double life, because he shared a bed with another woman,” said the singer in an interview on RTVE’s Lazos de sangre. It was her son Alejandro who discovered her father’s infidelity in his own house. That was the turning point for Jiménez, who decided to divorce her.
In 2004, he denounced Pepe Sancho for mistreatment. ”It was daily daily daily … a discomfort. I couldn’t stand a poisoned coexistence anymore,” the Andalusian explained in Your House is Mine. ”You have to live it, you have to live it. “They subordinate you,” she added.
