Shakira and Gerard Piqué have returned to a Barcelona courtroom, nearly four years after reaching the agreement that allowed their two sons, Milan and Sasha, to relocate to Miami with their mother. This time, the issue isn’t where the children live, but how frequently they should be expected to travel across the Atlantic to spend time with their father.
The Colombian superstar is seeking changes to the former couple’s visitation arrangements that would reduce the number of short trips the children make between Miami and Barcelona. According to reporting from Latin Times and EFE, Shakira is proposing that during shorter school vacations, Piqué travel to Miami rather than having Milan and Sasha fly to Spain for relatively brief stays.
The distinction is important. Shakira’s representatives have emphasized that the request is not intended to reduce the amount of time the children spend with their father. Instead, her position is that the responsibility and physical demands of traveling between the United States and Spain should not fall predominantly on the children.
Her team argues that repeated short-haul visits across the Atlantic involve significant time-zone changes and can disrupt the boys’ school, social and family routines. Allowing them to remain in Miami during shorter vacation periods, they argue, could better protect their emotional, physical and academic well-being while Piqué continues to maintain his relationship with his sons.
The latest proceedings revisit an arrangement established following Shakira and Piqué’s highly publicized 2022 separation. The former couple reached an agreement later that year, and Shakira subsequently moved from Barcelona to Miami with Milan and Sasha in April 2023.
Their parenting arrangement has consequently required managing family life across two continents. Piqué remains based in Barcelona, while Miami has become the boys’ primary home with Shakira.
The October 6 hearing brought both parents back to Barcelona’s Ciutat de la Justícia as the court considered the visitation issue. Reporting indicated that negotiations continued before the hearing but did not produce an agreement that prevented the matter from proceeding before the court.
For a former couple whose separation has generated years of global headlines, the latest legal chapter is ultimately less about celebrity drama than the practical realities of raising children when their parents live thousands of miles apart.
At the center of Shakira’s request is a relatively straightforward question: who should bear more of the burden of maintaining a transatlantic parenting arrangement?
For now, that question is back before the courts.