Hilaria Baldwin talks Spanish heritage accusations, says she's been misrepresented

Hilaria Baldwin wants to set the record straight — again.

Days after taking to Instagram to respond to accusations that she’s faked a Spanish heritage for years, the 36-year-old yoga instructor and author is speaking out once more, telling The New York Times that the whole situation is “very surreal” and that she’s been misrepresented.

“Today we have an opportunity to clarify for people who have been confused — and have been confused in some ways by people misrepresenting me,” Baldwin told the publication.

She used that opportunity to counter claims that, in the past, she asserted she was born in Spain, only coming to the U.S. when she was 19.

“The things I have shared about myself are very clear,” the mother of five said. “I was born in Boston. I spent time in Boston and in Spain. My family now lives in Spain. I moved to New York when I was 19 years old and I have lived here ever since. For me, I feel like I have spent 10 years sharing that story over and over again. And now it seems like it’s not enough.”

But the allegations about her background go further than that. The controversy started when one Twitter user, whose posts went viral, accused the wife of actor Alec Baldwin of faking a Spanish accent, with media clips to support the claim, and of being committed to a “decade long grift where she impersonates a Spanish person.”

However, according to Baldwin, she and her family visited Spain yearly since she was a baby, and she came by her cultural identity honestly.

“Who is to say what you’re allowed to absorb and not absorb growing up?” she mused in the interview.

She went on to explain that it was her father who had ties to Spain, having spent some of his own childhood there forming “deep, deep, deep bonds.” And since her brother and both parents now live in the European country, she sometimes refers to it as “home.”

“Home is where my parents are going to be,” she said. “If my parents move to China, I am going to go to China and say, ‘I’m going home.’”

And when it comes to Spain, she doesn’t plan to change how she regards it.

“This has been a part of my whole life,” Baldwin insisted, adding, “I can’t make it go away just because some people don’t understand it.”

Since the scandal took off in recent days, Baldwin hasn’t been the only one speaking out in response to it. Both her stepdaughter, model and actor Ireland Baldwin, and her husband have commented, as well, with the latter replying to one of her recent Instagram posts saying, “You haven’t faked anything. Ever.” He also assured her that, “as is often the case in a society such as the US is right now, the ravenous appetite for scandal will consume someone else.”

Still, she believes there’s a bright side to the spotlight that’s currently on her.

“There is a reason this conversation is happening right now,” she told The Times. “These are important conversations to have. But as people are able to come out as different parts of themselves and how they identify and have people listen, I think that’s extremely important.”