Hiba Abouk and Álvaro Muñoz Escassi, a mirage in the desert of exclusives: “It’s all a lie”

Summer is beginning, temperatures are rising, celebrities are fleeing the city to take refuge on their islands and yachts, and the exclusive business is turning into an arid desert. The first mirage of this summer season could be the supposed romance between actress Hiba Abouk, 37, and former jockey Álvaro Muñoz Escassi, 49. Abouk and Escassi, who met during the filming of the new season of the television show MasterChef Celebritycoincided this weekend at the multitudinous party given by the Andalusian businessman José Luis López, better known as The Nougat Makerin a hotel in Jerez on the occasion of her granddaughter’s communion. The friendship between the actress and the athlete has unleashed a storm of rumours in the gossip press and on television, which in recent days have given headlines with euphemisms typical of glossy magazines such as “special relationship”, “they are getting to know each other” or “complices and inseparable”.

Muñoz Escassi, who has just ended a relationship with former model María José Suárez, has not been forceful in denying the alleged romance with Abouk. “Hiba is a friend of mine. “I’m single and I’m not hurting anyone,” he told a collaborator of the program on Monday. AfternoonARHis words, which were not very conclusive, have only fueled the fire of rumours on the news portals. gossip and the television talk shows of the so-called heart. Some media outlets speak of “hugs in the dark”, “furtive kisses” and “meals for two”, versions that have surprised the involuntary protagonist of this story. “Hiba can’t believe it. She went to that party because he invited her The Nougat Maker. She did not go as a companion to anyone. She knows Álvaro, but they are not a couple nor do they have a romantic relationship. She likes him very much, but there is nothing more. They have friends in common, but little more,” the actress’s entourage clarifies to EL PAÍS. “It’s all a lie. The hug thing is a lie. The kiss thing, too. There was not a gesture of affection or a single physical contact between them. Did they eat together? Yes, they had breakfast at a table with six other people,” the same sources point out.

Abouk, who in March 2023 made public her separation from the football player Achraf Hakimi, is bewildered by the media frenzy that this story has unleashed. “She is hallucinating. She does not understand why so much fuss about coinciding with Álvaro, another friend. At that same party he was also with his friend Pitingo the whole time and nobody says anything. Of course, that does not sell,” they explain from her entourage. “What is being said is a lie,” they insist to this newspaper. And sometimes lies can hurt. According to her friends, Abouk would be mortified by how this information can affect her two children, Amin and Naím, the fruit of her marriage to Hakimi. The divorce of the interpreter and the footballer has been a painful and media-driven affair, marked by accusations of sexual abuse against him in France, and Abouk does not want her children to go through something similar again.

Speculations about the actress’s love life coincide with a good professional moment for the actress, who rose to fame exactly a decade ago with the series Prince. Now he has returned to the screens with Eva & Nicolea fiction on Antena 3 and Atresplayer in which he shares the lead role with Belén Rueda. He is also in the middle of filming the ninth season of MasterChef Celebritywhich is scheduled to premiere at the end of September. It was there that she met Muñoz Escassi. Among the contestants in this edition are actors María León, Rubén Ochandino and José Lamuño, singer Pitingo, former popular politician Cristina Cifuentes and the unclassifiable Pocholo Martínez-Bordiú.

For his part, Álvaro Muñoz Escassi is a regular character in gossip magazines and celebrity gossip shows for his famous romances and his strident television appearances. The rider began his career in television in 2009 as a contestant on Survivors and in 2010 he released his own reality show, I Love Escassiwhere he tried to find a partner. A year later he was a contestant on Cornered and in 2013 he participated in the program Look who’s jumping! Escassi has a daughter with a love from his youth and a son with the presenter and actress Lara Dibildos. He had romantic relationships with other famous women such as Vicky Martín Berrocal, Sonia Ferrer and the Venezuelan millionaire Raquel Bernal. He married the latter at the end of 2016, divorcing only six months later. His last relationship was with María José Suárez, Miss Spain 1996, a relationship that has just ended. “We have broken up, but we love each other very much. Don’t look for or twist,” he told the media. “I don’t want to know anything about this person,” she said.