Shakira has gone into more detail about a bizarre incident in September when wild boars snatched her handbag while she was relaxing in a Barcelona park.
The singer has said in a new interview that she and her son were left to defend themselves from the ambush by two large hogs while “people weren’t doing anything” to help.
“It’s just crazy!” she reflected to Glamour of the incident as well as the social media reaction to her story.
“I was taking my son, Milan, for a walk in the park and I got him a little ice cream,” she explained. “We sat on one of those park benches and we were just minding our own business. And then two huge wild boars came from the back and ambushed [us] and took my purse!
“And I was like, ‘Oh, my God! Oh, my God!’ and screaming, because they were taking it away, with my phone in it, my car keys, everything! Like they could understand me! And people were just watching and they weren’t doing anything!”
“They started digging inside my purse…obviously my son’s sandwich was inside the purse, so that’s why they were so interested. So they took the sandwich and walked away and left my purse. It was wild.”
Although Shakira’s story appears to be unusual, according to the BBC there has been a long line of incidents related to wild boars in Barcelona in recent years. 1,187 phone calls were made to Spanish police about wild hogs in the Spanish city in 2016 alone, with the animals attacking dogs and holding up traffic in the city.
In 2013, a police officer in Barcelona aimed to retaliate at a boar in the city by shooting at it, but missed the boar and instead hit his partner, the publication added.
Wild boar numbers in urban centres have increased massively in Europe over the course of the past decade, with recent estimates claiming that over 10 million boar live across the continent.
Meanwhile, earlier this year Shakira joined more than 2,000 songwriters and artists in signing an open letter to all record labels as part of an ongoing campaign to establish fair pay for songwriters.
The post Shakira says “people were just watching” and didn’t help when wild boars robbed her in Barcelona appeared first on NME.
