The year began and ended with 'Christ and King'. The series that showed the turbulent romantic relationship between Bárbara Rey and Ángel Cristo was one of the most anticipated premieres at the start of 2023. The Atresplayer platform premiered it in January and in November it reached the open air of Antena 3. The series addressed fleeting courtship and the couple's high-profile wedding that gave way to nine years of apparent happiness (birth of two children, sports cars, jewelry, an ostentatious chalet...) but that in reality hid stories of drug addiction, gambling, infidelities and abuse. And she did not shy away from the controversy that has accompanied the popular actress and vedette for years: the relationship that she maintained in secret with the emeritus king Juan Carlos I.
Bárbara Rey (Totana, Murcia, 1950) returned in this way, after a few years relatively away from the media spotlight, to be current and to be invited to television programs. Thus, in Risto Mejide's program 'Traveling with Chester', the actress spoke openly in February about her relationship with the emeritus king and the abuse suffered by her husband. The one who was one of the most famous actresses and presenters commented that although one might think otherwise, being the King's mistress has not benefited her: "It destroyed my career," said the interviewee, who reported having been "banned" on television by the crown.
Bárbara Rey also told Mejide about the hell she experienced with Ángel Cristo due to the mistreatment. She said that one night after a “very big fight,” Ángel Cristo kicked her out of the house barefoot and without clothes. He “shot me once.” An incident from which she miraculously emerged unharmed because she bent her legs and the bullet passed her side. “I was afraid that something would happen to my children and me. But when I reported it, they didn't listen to me, they laughed."
The actress opened up again a few weeks later in the documentary series 'Una vida Bárbara', which Antena 3 premiered in April and which was the result of 22 hours of personal interview in the living room of her own home. There she addressed more topics such as her famous “night of love” with Chelo García-Cortés. One night that was New Year's Eve and in which they were not alone but with three other men, one of them, José Manuel Parada, kept up the night with Bárbara Rey and Chelo García-Cortes herself.
In a year in which everything was confessions and some revelation of secrets, the actress was in the news again in June when it emerged that the artist and her children, Sofía and Ángel Cristo Jr., could go to trial accused of an alleged crime of extortion. . According to the Prosecutor's Office, the star would have carried out several financial operations, putting her assets in the name of some relatives, among whom were her children, to cause a "situation of economic helplessness" and not pay the 143,902 euros that the Agency was demanding. Tax.
Information that Bárbara denied from the first moment with a forceful statement in which she defended her innocence and assured that she was up to date with her payments to the Treasury. She hinted that the leak of her alleged crime was due to the existence of a 'black hand': "It is a coincidence that the documentary comes out, the series comes out and now this happens when this issue is years old." The trial was set for June 19 but the hearing was finally suspended because one of the defendants was missing.
But the worst that 2023 would have in store for Bárbara Rey was yet to come. Her brother Salvador de ella, whom she had been caring for in recent years, died on November 24 after a long illness. A death occurred hours before the interview that left the actress “destroyed”, according to her inner circle, in this final stretch of the year: the one offered by her son Ángel Cristo Jr to the program 'De Friday' on Telecinco .
An interview that surprised everyone because Ángel has always had good words for his mother. But on this occasion, his statements did not leave his mother in a good light. Ángel claimed to have “chilling” memories of his childhood. "My father was a sick man," he said, and he defined his mother as "too modern, she was not a circus woman." With this panorama, he assured that his life as a child was hell and that, after the separation of his parents: "The real nightmare was not my father but my mother."
"The fear is that my father would not kill my mother one day," Ángel recalls, but he pointed out that his father had the problem with her and not with his children. And he insisted that his mother did not encourage family unity. "The desire of my father was to destroy my mother", but the fact that my mother later told everything publicly made me "become the talk of the entire school." Regarding her mother's relationship with Juan Carlos I, she revealed that she had forced to take intimate photographs of the couple.
Some explosive statements that led the actress to say that she did not recognize her son: "As of today, my son has died for me," as revealed by a journalist in a Telecinco program, who added that she would even be willing to sue On the other hand, her daughter Sofía, who has given her all her support, recently assured that her mother was “destroyed and very bad” and that she had had “a very serious decline in health” after this latest family crisis.
