They met as teenagers. He was 18 when they married, she was already pregnant, and the neighbourhood did not give them much of a chance. Forty years later, four children and several grandchildren later, Javier Labandon - Spanish audiences know him as El Arrebato - and his wife Rocio are separating.

There is no third person, no scandal, no late-night photograph that explains everything. According to the Spanish press, the relationship simply wore out. That is the least interesting version of a separation, and precisely for that reason the most likely one.

What is being negotiated is not love, but accounting

The interesting part of this story begins exactly where attention usually stops. The two already have separate lawyers, and the dispute is not about who loved whom more. The dispute is about money.

Rocio, it is reported, believes she is entitled to lifelong support because she most likely could not work while he was building his career, and therefore does not have enough contribution years for her own old age. He, in turn, has offered her a house in Zahara de los Atunes and child support. The lawyers are now negotiating in order to avoid court.

One person's career, nobody's pension record

This is the part worth reading twice. The man who said in an interview that she is responsible for all his successes, that she keeps him grounded and gives him light, is now arguing through lawyers about what that role is worth.

And here the story stops being Spanish. How many women in our region have the same biography - forty years of running a household around somebody's career, zero contributions paid, and a pension that does not exist because the work was never registered as work? While it functions, nobody counts it. When it stops functioning, in comes the accountant.

In 2019 they celebrated 30 years of marriage at a hacienda near Seville, with renewed vows, with guests, with photographers. Six years have passed since. The difference between then and now is not in who changed, but in the fact that when there is singing at a celebration, nobody asks whose pension record it is.