One hates to assign anything positive to an automobile accident that ends a promising athletic career, but would Julio Iglesias have even become a singer -- one of the most popular in the world, if not the most popular -- if not for an accident at age 20 that left him temporarily paralyzed? (And would his son Enrique have chosen a career in music if not for his father's example?)

At the time, Iglesias was goalkeeper for six-time world champion soccer team Real Madrid's junior squad.

Modestly, he said of his sports career, "I was terrible, but I was on a very good team."

Speaking by phone from Argentina, where he was recently performing during a world tour that will bring him to Escondido on Friday, Iglesias said he loved soccer but was also attending law school to have another career after sports.

The budding sports star was coming home late one night when the accident left him with a compressed vertebrae and paralysis over much of his body. With doctors unsure whether he would ever walk again, Iglesias said he took up guitar as part of his physical therapy regimen.

"Holding the guitar, I could start to move my fingers," he explained.

After he regained use of his limbs, he moved to England to continue his studies -- and, as it turned out, his love affair with music.

"When I started music, I was in England to start my first year of school," he said.

Still playing guitar and beginning to write his own songs, he said he took full advantage of the remarkable music scene in London in 1967 and '68 -- listing Tom Jones, Engelbert Humperdinck and a visiting Louis Armstrong as singers who grabbed his attention.

Growing up in Madrid, he didn't listen much to music, being focused on sports as he was, and didn't come from a musical family.

"We are all journalists and writers and doctors," he said of his extended family.

His mother sang around the house -- "She had a great voice, but was not a professional at all."

So when he was teaching himself guitar and writing his early songs in London in the late 1960s, he was starting from scratch.

While today he is renowned as one of the great romantic singers and generally thought of as a Spanish singer (although he also sings in English, French, Italian, Portuguese, Japanese and Tagalog), Iglesias said his musical style was formed more by the English-language singers of the late '60s and early '70s. He said the renaissance of Spanish music that occurred in the mid- to late 1970s, as flamenco melded with pop styles, had not taken off.

"We had the influence of the Anglo-Saxons, an Elvis Presley, more than our own. … In the early '70s, we didn't have the influence of Spanish singers."

Still, if not overtly influenced by his native country's musical heritage, he is avowedly a Spanish patriot. When asked whether he sings in the different Spanish dialects when performing in Spain -- Catalan or Galician, rather than the official Castilian that most people think of as "Spanish" -- Iglesias emphatically said no.

While he said he is glad that the regional tongues survive, and is supportive of the various regional heritage movements, he said the Spanish must cling to their common ties.

"One of the things that is very important for Spain is to remember what it is that makes us Spanish, and part of that is a shared language."

When asked whether his style was shaped by the French chanson singers such as Charles Trenet, Charles Aznavour or Henri Salvador, he said "Of course," and added that one of the great thrills of his music career was being able to sing with them once he established himself.

As one of the top-selling singers of all time, with hundreds of millions of records sold, Iglesias could be excused for thinking about retirement now that he's 64. In speaking with him, however, that seems to be the furthest thing from his mind.

During a recent tour of South Africa, he was heartened to see people who have been his fans for many years still coming to the show, now bringing their children and grandchildren.

"I adore the idea that I can still survive in all these generations," he said, adding with a laugh, "If they stop buying my records, I'm finished."

Julio Iglesias

When: 8 p.m. April 11

Where: California Center for the Arts, Escondido, 340 North Escondido Blvd., Escondido

Tickets: $63-$78

Info: (800) 988-4253 or artcenter.org

Web: julioiglesias.com