An American court has decided: fifteen-year-old Nico stays in Miami, with his mother. The Spanish businessman Colate Vallejo-Nagera, who spent years asking for his son to live with him in Spain, lost the battle against his former wife, the Mexican singer Paulina Rubio. The divorce lasted longer than the marriage, and the custody dispute has now run almost as long as the child's own childhood.

The timing of the ruling is what hurts most. It came right after father and son spent a summer together in Spain, with the whole family, with photographs on social media and with a sentence from the father that reads differently now than when it was written: "Today a summer full of memories ends. Whatever we carry, nothing can outweigh our love. I love you, Nico." The boy replied: "A great summer at home." The father answered: "The best son in the universe."

What he says through journalists rather than himself

Colate has not spoken directly. Journalist Isabel Gonzalez relayed that he believes there is only one victim in the whole dispute, and it is neither him nor Paulina. "He tells me he doesn't want to speak, he is deeply affected because he thinks the one who lost is his son," she said, adding that the man "can barely get a word out". She also passed on a sentence worth reading twice: "Justice has not treated me well, not in Spain either."

It is a sentence you hear in another language, in another country, from parents who have neither a television slot nor a journalist to relay it. When one parent lives in one country and the child in another, the court in the end decides not who loves more, but where the child has already built a life. That is cold logic, but it is also the only kind that works without turning into a contest between two adults.

Asked whether he will appeal, journalist Beatriz Cortazar says the answer isn't clear, but that she has the feeling Colate will let time do its work. Nico turns sixteen in November. Two more years and the decision will no longer be made by any court, but by the boy himself.

From a wedding in Cancun to a courtroom in Miami

The story began in 2007, with a wedding in Cancun and the singer saying she had dreamed of that day since she was small. Nico was born in November 2010. Two years later came the divorce, which Colate said at the time had been a joint decision, "although perhaps I was more decisive in carrying it out". Another sentence that reads differently years later.

Towards the end of 2025 he said the only thing missing for him to be completely happy was for his son to come and live in Spain. "One day he will come, because that's what he wants." The court has established that this isn't happening now. Whether the boy really wants it, only the boy knows - and he is the one party in this whole story who has not once spoken publicly.