Ana Obregón apologizes to Antonia Dell'Atte for falsely accusing her of forging an abuse complaint

An apology five years on

Spanish actress and presenter Ana Obregón (71) publicly apologized to Antonia Dell'Atte (61) on Instagram on Tuesday, 3 November, in a statement posted with a photo of the two women together. The post came five years after Obregón accused the Italian of forging a 1991 domestic abuse complaint against Alessandro Lequio, Dell'Atte's former husband. In the statement, Obregón said she had made those claims without knowing firm rulings from the investigating court and the Audiencia de Madrid that had ruled out any forgery. She admitted the claims were untrue and said they had damaged Dell'Atte's good name and honor.

“I admit that my statements and accusations have caused damage to the good name and honor of Mrs. Dell Atte.”

The two women had appeared together on the cover of ¡Hola! in 2016, according to La Razón, before tensions between them returned.

What Obregón said in 2021

In April 2021 Obregón posted on Instagram that she had seen a police scientific report concluding that Dell'Atte had forged the complaint. Obregón and Lequio's son, Aless Lequio, had died in May 2020 at the age of 27 in a Barcelona hospital, and the dispute over the 1991 complaint has run alongside that loss for years. The statement says the post was shared with all of her followers and drew more than 130,000 comments and likes. It also says the outlet Informalia picked it up and that other media repeated the claim afterwards. The statement puts her account at more than one million followers, while EL PAÍS cites 1.3 million.

Closing words

Obregón closed the post to comments and added a postscript, which reads as follows.

“Repenting in silence is not enough. Whoever has caused harm must also have the courage to acknowledge it.”

In the same postscript she wrote that she was very sorry to Dell'Atte and to the son of Dell'Atte and Lequio. The statement was also shared in her Instagram stories, according to EL PAÍS.

The legal case and Dell'Atte's reaction

Dell'Atte filed a complaint for alleged calumny against Obregón in 2022 at investigating court number 3 in Barcelona, where the court found sufficient indications to investigate the facts. ABC describes the apology as coming alongside an ongoing legal process between Dell'Atte and Lequio. Dell'Atte's reaction came in a message to the journalist Marta Riesco, which was aired on the programme El Sótano de TEN. In it she said Obregón had left Lequio, whom Dell'Atte described as her tormentor and abuser, exposed.