The clan with a tan

The heart-throb is running a long finger down the starlet's deep cleavage. He is standing with his torso sloping backwards, hips thrust forward, so that his crotch forms the apex of his body. His tiny Prada shirt hugs his upper body. His leather trousers, thick cross-stitches running the length of them, bulge with the strain.

The starlet, platinum-blond hair piled high on her head, twirls coquettishly in her sparkling silver cocktail dress. She is called Esperanza (Hope), which also happens to be the name of the song that the heart-throb is crooning to her. 'I assure you that without you I have nothing,' its Spanish-language lyric goes. 'You are forever the angel of my dreams.' Now his finger is reaching for the small of her back. Eight thousand watching girls go bonkers. Sitting a few feet away, Esperanza's boyfriend Fernando - hair by Castrol GTX, shirt'n'slacks combo by Miami Vice - glowers.

We are at Mexico City's Auditorio Nacional, at the climax of an episode of Mexico's leading soap opera and of the latest concert by Enrique Iglesias. Enrique has sold an astonishing 13 million albums in three years. Here, as in most other Spanish-speaking countries, he's a bit of a god. There are soap operas in Peru and Venezuela named after his songs; his is the theme tune to the Mexican soap Nunca Te Olvidaré (I'll Never Forget You), which stars Esperanza.

So tonight the soap's most glamorous couple are filmed attending a concert by the country's top pop star. And whaddaya know? Esperanza is plucked onstage for Enrique's traditional smoochy clinch with a member of the audience.

('I did it as a favour to the producer,' Enrique says later in his Hispanic-tinged American accent. 'He put my song in the show. It's the main song, it goes out every night at eight o'clock, prime time. That sells a lot of records.')

Enrique is now on his knees, face hovering in front of Esperanza's groin. The music, all sultry Latin balladry, humps to a close. Esperanza tries to look only professionally flustered. Enrique drags her offstage in the manner of a frisky caveman. Daddy would approve.

Enrique Iglesias, 24, is the second son of Julio Iglesias. Julio Jr, 26, is his older brother. This summer, the brothers both release their first singles in the UK. In the anodyne blandness of Julio Jr's music and in Enrique's rampant sexuality, we see a lot of their father. The skin of all three Iglesias men is the sun-kissed colour of toffee.

Julio Jr, Enrique and their sister Chaveli, 27, are the offspring of Julio Senior's marriage to Isabel Preysler. The children moved to America from Madrid in 1982, in the wake of their parents' split. There were security reasons, as well: in December 1981, Julio's father had been kidnapped by Basque terrorists.

The kids grew up in Miami, at Indian Creek. This was the purpose-built retreat from which Julio masterminded his assault on the United States, the last market in the world to resist his smoother-than-smooth blandishments. When the plans for the house were being drawn up, he insisted that the kids should be able to walk straight from their bedrooms into the swimming pool. 'Sometimes it didn't feel like it was our home, it felt like it was invaded. Television crews, business people.'

It is the day after the second of his three Auditorio Nacional shows, and Enrique is sitting in his hotel suite. He is a tall, rangy, muscular, handsome lad. When he folds his arms for the camera, he will push out his biceps with his fists and smoulder through his eyebrows. He doesn't need to. 'It came to a point when there were always too many people around the house,' he says. 'I moved out of there when I was 10, to another house nearby. My grandmother was there. And my nanny.'

It was to his nanny, Elvira Olivares, that Enrique dedicated his first album. 'She saw me every day. In a way, she was the closest to being a mother.'

Were you kept away from your dad's women? 'No, not really. It was obvious. It wasn't really unhealthy; there were just a lot of women. Actually, there weren't really that many women.' You weren't shocked? 'No, I liked it. As we got older, my dad didn't want us to see them.' Probably frightened you would have stepped in. 'Probably would have!' Enrique explodes into laughter and slaps my thigh.

After the previous night's show, we had gone to a club. The women danced with their hands above their heads; the men had jerseys slung over their shoulders. There was a waterfall. Flunkies in caramel-coloured suits, walkie-talkies clamped to their ears, led Enrique's party to a roped-off area. There he had nursed a beer and flirted with the clouds of micro-skirted, maxi-breasted girls in his party. 'Yeah, I slept alone,' he says now. 'I love women, I gotta say, but it's hard to find a girl that really loves you. They also screw you up. Yeah, I'm a flirt. I don't know if I'm good at it, but I do try to press the flesh.'

The day before I go to Mexico to meet Enrique, I interview his big brother in the offices of his record company in London. For the past three months, Julio Jr has been promoting his album Under My Eyes all over the world. 'It's funny,' he says in his speedy, Spanish-American rasp, 'but in a lot of the radio stations in Europe, they haven't been using my second name. Some places they're like, "Ah, another Iglesias." They don't take me seriously. But I'm a musician, I write my own music. I want people to take me seriously.'

A former bit-part model and television presenter, Julio Jr is small, floppy and bouncy, an eager puppy with a new stick. 'Yeah, I kicked Enrique's ass when were kids!' he barks. 'It's funny, because everybody tells me I look younger than him.'

Does your father cast a shadow over your music? 'No, he fell in love with it. "Wow, man, this is cool," he said. "This is different. There's something there. I like it, I dig it."'

In Britain, Julio Jr is off the blocks first with 'One More Chance', the debut single from his debut album. It is a piece of fluff that wants to sound like George Michael and will be bought by people who think Boyzone are soulful. Enrique follows a month later with 'Bailamos' ('Let's Dance'). Its English-language lyrics and Latin-sounding music were written by the team responsible for Cher's 'Believe', and it is the second single from the soundtrack of the new Will Smith film, Wild Wild West. Brits returning from their hols in Marbella will like it. So will any pasty-face Anglo tickled by the easy sauciness of America's latest musical fad - the 'Latin pop explosion', a crossover spearheaded by the square-jawed former teen-poppet Ricky Martin and singer/actress Jennifer Lopez.

But Enrique was there first. He has had 10 consecutive number ones on Billboard's Latin charts and won a Grammy with his first album in 1996.

You haven't heard of Enrique because, until now, he has never released an English-language single. Unlike the soul-lite of Julio Jr, who has studiously avoided overlapping with, and being overshadowed by his phenomenally successful little brother, Enrique has not abandoned his Spanish roots, building a massive fanbase in the process. But just like Julio Sr - who was a megastar all over the world except in Britain and the US until he released 'Begin The Beguine' and 'To All The Girls I've Loved Before' in 1981 and 1984 respectively - Enrique is launching a precision assault on the 'Anglo' market.

'For Americans, Latin-American records have more spice, more ingredients,' says Ma–uel Calderon, vice-president of A&R at Universal Records in Mexico, which distributes Enrique's records in this country. 'American pop music is more boring - no new things. That's why Americans like hip-hop and black music. But black music is not music, it's rhythms, and Latin-American music preserves the melody.

'Believe me, if Enrique didn't exist here, I am sure that Julio Jr would want to record in Spanish. He doesn't want to lose in front of his little brother. I think that in the next 10 years, Latin-American music is going to be the next new wave, while Anglo music is recovering freshness.'

In Mexico City's Auditorio Nacional, Enrique's entire show is in Spanish. Even his cover of Yazoo's 'Only You' and his early hit 'Experiencia Religiosa', which Boyzone covered in a (failed) attempt to break into the Latin-American market.

There are fireworks and a clever scene in which Enrique is suspended over the audience. His band, assembled by Billy Joel's musical director from the entourages of John Mellencamp, Meatloaf and Joe Cocker, are as soft-rock as you might imagine.

'Enrique is one of the biggest artists in Mexico,' says Calderon. 'Why? Because he has an extraordinary charisma, his look - everybody's in love with him. He's very professional - that's new in this country. He knows what the people want.

'Enrique doesn't have a big voice, like his father, but he has a voice with a teardrop in the throat. You can see Julio in India, giving bread to the people. Enrique is falling in love with the girls, but not as a playboy. With tenderness.'

Enrique insists, perhaps a little too emphatically, that he doesn't have to fight the Don Juan image. Is he sure? Don't people think he's his father's son, the millionaire Latin playboy? 'No. It's gone so well for me in the markets where my dad was huge that the comparisons are not the same any more. They had me compete against him - 'Who sells the most records?' - but when it comes down to appearances, we're completely different.'

When Enrique talks about 'Bailamos' and the English-speaking territories, he is aware that he is as valuable to them as the Hispanic market is to American performers. Hip-hop mogul Puff Daddy, for example, appears on the Jennifer Lopez album, and is releasing his own new single, 'PE 2000', in English and Spanish versions. Within the next three years, the number of Spanish speakers in the US is expected to top 30 million, making them the largest ethnic minority there - more than 15 per cent of the population. Last year, Latin music sales were worth a cool $570.9 million in the US.

'The Latin economic structure has continued to grow, and [we] have to figure out a way to tap it,' says Sean 'Puffy' Combs. He filmed the video for the Spanish version of 'PE 2000' at the two million-strong Puerto Rican parade in New York late last month. 'The numbers that these [pop] groups are doing out of nowhere are phenomenal.'

This gives some insight as to why Lopez, at the peak of her Hollywood acclaim after appearing alongside George Clooney in Out Of Sight, put her film career on hold, dug into her Puerto Rican roots and made an album, On The Six, full of slick Latin grooves and sinuous Spanish guitar. And why Madonna recorded a duet with Ricky Martin, a former star of rotating kiddie boy-band Menudo, for his eponymous first English-language album. That album sold a record 661,000 copies in two days on its release in America in May. It was knocked off the number-one slot after five weeks. By Jennifer Lopez.

No one, it seems, can resist the siren call of the Latin groove. Martin occupies number-one positions across Asia, South America and northern Europe. 'Livin' La Vida Loca', his first English-language single, is predicted to enter the British album charts at number one today.

'Will Smith, he's the one that called me,' Enrique gushes. 'I was in Miami, he was in LA. He was like, "Hi, it's Will Smith, I'm coming out with a new movie. It's called Wild Wild West. I'd like you to be on the soundtrack. I want a big Spanish star to do something in English, do something cool." I guess he knows how big the market has become in the States.'

He knows his markets. You have to if, as an artist, English is your second language. In the school holidays, he and his brother toured with their father through Europe and Japan. Enrique says he spent his childhood spying on his father.

'I'd just hang around and watch,' he says. 'I know the business because I've been in it since I was a kid. I love marketing music. You have to be an artist to do that. It takes planning, intelligence - it takes a lot of concentration.'

Just after Enrique was born, Julio Sr targeted Mexico with an album, A Mexico. In 1971, barely two years into his career, Julio had cemented his future in Japan by recording a Japanese version of one of his first hits. Last year, Enrique had a Christmas Day special aired on Taiwanese television, his profile secured after a local artist recorded two of his songs in Chinese.

He will be pleased that the British arm of his record company is already wondering about duets with English-speaking artists for his second British single. Sharleen Spiteri of Texas, it is felt, would be great. Enrique talks about how 'Bailamos' should be big on the Med this summer. He is planning a big push in Spain.

Enrique tosses around a bottle of water and flops his meaty limbs in his hotel suite's leather chair. He doesn't like interviews. Once he fell asleep during one. For the same reason - impatience - he can't be bothered with restaurants and eats McDonald's most days. Food means fuel. He likes talking about his penis, playing bad practical jokes (he fills his manager's luggage with fruit) and waterskiing. Unless we are talking about marketing, there are panes of glass that are more reflective. As his father once said: 'I represent a fantasy. The legend is stronger than reality.'

The next day, we travel with Enrique to the venue. The lobby is crawling with security guards and metal detectors. We are in a mini-van. All the windows are tinted, except the driver's and the front passenger's.

Enrique sits in the front passenger seat. As we emerge from the hotel's underground car park, the waiting girls spot him and swarm over the van.

Also in the van is Fernan Martinez, a former Colombian journalist who was Julio Iglesias's long-serving press officer. Now he is Enrique's manager. When he was shopping for a deal, Enrique didn't use his second name. He called himself Enrique Martinez, and said he was Colombian.

'Look,' says Martinez, pointing at Enrique's sports bag, not for the first time, 'he even carries his own bag. You know, he's not a big-shot star.'

Martinez is trying to finalise a major label deal for Enrique. His contract with the small Los Angeles Spanish-language label that 'discovered' him has expired. But the small label is owned by the biggest television company in Latin America, says Martinez. In response to Enrique's defection, they have cancelled all his scheduled television appearances in Mexico. That's why one of the gigs in Mexico City is only 80 per cent full.

Martinez has already told me how Enrique received 4,000 faxes on his birthday last week. 'The fans in Argentina, they're crazy,' he says. 'They bare their breasts at him as we drive along.'

We are chased to the venue by a convoy of cars. Once at the front entrance, speed-bumps force the van to slow to a crawl. The queue spots Enrique and swarms the vehicle. Enrique's window threatens to pop out. A security guard jumps on to the running board to swat away the teenagers. After a few thumps outside the van, we enter the bowels of the venue.

After the show, everyone goes to a tiny music club. Enrique and his two high-school buddies - who travel with him so he has someone to shadow-box with - draw penises on napkins, or write messages that say 'I want to f*** you', and pass them to the girls at the table. The girls are thrilled.

Enrique may not be the brightest star in the galaxy, but he's certainly one of the biggest. Three weeks after our meeting, his new record deal is unveiled. He has signed a $40 million contract with Universal Music for five albums, three of them in Spanish, two in English. REM secured $80 million and Janet Jackson $70 million when they renegotiated their deals. Enrique Iglesias has barely started. Daddy would be proud.

• The Observer

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