“I’m just thinking of raising my kids. I don’t see that for now. Maybe when they’re older,” Shakira told People this month, a line she repeated as she took a brief break from her Las Mujeres Ya No Lloran World Tour — and then was photographed leaving a hotel in Los Angeles with actor Manuel Garcia-Rulfo.
The images, shared by DeuxMoi, show Shakira and Manuel Garcia-Rulfo walking out of the Sunset Tower Hotel together this week. The sighting came days after Shakira performed two shows in Los Angeles to launch the new leg of her world tour and arrived while she was offstage and not performing.
The photographs immediately generated questions about whether the two stars are romantically involved. Garcia-Rulfo, best known for Netflix’s The Lincoln Lawyer and also appearing in Jurassic World Rebirth and A Man Called Otto, has been linked in the past; he was photographed showing PDA with Audrey McGraw in 2024 and their split was reported earlier this year after they unfollowed each other on Instagram.
For Shakira, the public life that follows her music has been complicated by much more than career decisions. She split from soccer player Gerard Pique, the father of her two children, and has repeatedly framed her priorities around family. In the same People interview where she spoke of parenting she added, “Through those challenging moments, I discovered how resilient we all are.”
The friction between words and images is simple: Shakira has said she is not looking for a relationship now, and yet she was seen leaving a hotel with Garcia-Rulfo. Sightings like this rarely produce neat answers. A shared taxi, a friendly dinner or the start of something private can all look the same through a single photograph.
What the pictures do not do is provide a confirmation of a romance. No public statement from either star has changed that fact. The sighting is a dateable, visible event that feeds curiosity precisely because it occurred while Shakira was between Los Angeles concerts on a world tour that has refocused her public schedule.
Garcia-Rulfo’s recent relationship history adds fuel to the story: his PDA with McGraw in 2024 and their split earlier this year were widely noted, and that past attention makes any new out-of-doors appearance more likely to be read as romantic. For Shakira, whose public statements now emphasize parenting and recovery, even a short outing can be parsed as either a private moment or the start of something more.
There is a practical consequence to the mismatch between sighting and statement. If Shakira intends to keep family at the center of her life while touring, as she says she does, any public association with another high-profile figure will be scrutinized and could become a distraction from the tour itself. If neither side wishes to make the private public, the images will stand alone as what they are: a single episode that invites interpretation without providing proof.
Answering the obvious question—are they dating—the facts do not support a definitive yes. The photograph from the Sunset Tower Hotel is a provable, recent encounter; it is not evidence of an acknowledged relationship. Shakira’s own words about focusing on her children and discovering resilience through recent challenges make clear what she has publicly prioritized. Whether that priority changes, or whether Garcia-Rulfo and Shakira will offer any clarification, remains unanswered, but the responsible conclusion today is that the sighting prompted speculation without confirming a romance.
