Manchester City manager the Spanish journalist

Lorena Vazquez, who forms part of a highly-respected duo of reporters known in Spain as the Mamarazzis, said overnight: “It’s been a carefully-considered decision the couple discussed over several months. They continue to have a cordial and affectionate relationship.

“No-one else is involved. There are no third parties. We are going to carry on seeing them together.”

She added after “They weren’t expecting any journalists or media outlets would confirm this break-up but I can assure you they’re living apart and only a small handful of people knew about this.”

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Guardiola, who has three grown-up children with his fashion boss wife, has always stayed at the family home - an £8.5 million mansion in ’s most elite neighbourhood - when he has returned to the Catalan capital from Manchester. It is not yet clear where he will base himself in the future when he spends time in Barcelona.

Cristina is expected to remain in the family home, which used to be owned by Pep’s former Mexican centre-back Rafa Marquez. Guardiola purchased the property, situated in the high part of Barcelona, from a Russian businessman in February 2021. He is understood to have purchased it through a company he was running with his wife for a cool £8.4 million.

The four-storey house, near to a six-mile stretch of dirt tracks on the outskirts of Barcelona called Carretera de les Aigues, has a large swimming pool in its grounds.It occupies a plot of more than 22,000 square feet and the house itself is an impressive 8,000 square feet.

Catalan press seized on the house purchase, which was made public in June 2021, as a sign Guardiola could be planning a return to Barcelona following Joan Laporta’s election as its president. Cristina Serra moved into the property two years after leaving Manchester to return to her home city.

El Confidencial described the mansion today as “the perfect place for a separation without anyone discovering when you leave or enter” although it insisted the couple had spent together at the property with their three children Maria, 24; Marius, 22; and 17-year-old Valentina. It added: “It’s the €10 million mansion that marked the physical distancing of Guardiola and his wife in 2021.”

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