Juan Carlos I of Spain

Juan Carlos I of Spain (Rome, January 5, 1938) was King of Spain from November 22, 1975 to June 18, 2014, when he abdicated the Crown in his son Felipe VI. After his resignation, he continues to use the title of king with an honorary character, maintaining the treatment of "majesty", and he became captain general of the Armed Forces in the reserve, although without exercising constitutional functions.

His reign began with the solemn proclamation, by the Francoist Cortes, on November 22, 1975, two days after the death of Francisco Franco and in accordance with the Law of Succession in the Headquarters of State of 1947 and the Law of July 22, 1969 –his father, Juan de Borbón, legitimate heir to the throne of Spain, described this law as a "monstrous monster" and he did not renounce dynastic rights to him until 1977. The Spanish Constitution, ratified by popular referendum on December 6, 1978 and promulgated on December 27 of the same year, explicitly recognizes him as King of Spain and legitimate heir to the historic Bourbon dynasty, and grants him the Headquarters of the State. The Magna Carta confers on his dignity the rank of a symbol of national unity. Before his proclamation, due to Franco's delicate health, he had intermittently performed interim functions at the Head of State.

The influence of King Juan Carlos in the Spanish Transition and his role during the 1981 coup attempt, as well as his support for European integration and his contribution to strengthening diplomatic relations, earned him merit during his reign of multiple tributes, recognitions, prizes and international awards. In that regard, Time magazine journalist Howard Chua-Eoan called him "one of the most unlikely and inspiring heroes of freedom of the 20th century, defying an attempted military coup that sought to subvert the young post-Franco democracy of Spain".

However, the second part of his reign was more controversial. His image in the media and in public opinion began to deteriorate as a result of the Nóos case, a trial for corruption that directly implicated one of his daughters, the Infanta Cristina, and which would culminate in the imprisonment of her husband., Inaki Urdangarin. Later, in 2012, the monarch himself suffered an accident in Botswana for which he had to be evacuated to Spain; Due to this mishap, it was learned that he had traveled to the African country to participate in an elephant hunt sponsored by influential Saudi businessmen and organized by his then-lover Corinna Larsen.

In June 2014, he abdicated in favor of his son Felipe, who ascended the throne as Felipe VI. It was decreed, however, that Juan Carlos retain the title of king for life and honor, the treatment of Majestad and honors similar to those of the heir to the Crown. Five years later, in June In 2019, he announced that he was definitively leaving institutional life, and a year later, due to growing suspicions of corruption, he was stripped by Felipe VI of the budget allocation that he had been receiving from the King's House.

On August 3, 2020, the Casa del Rey made public the will of Juan Carlos to leave Spain due to the public repercussion generated by "certain past events" in his "private life", without specifying the country of destination, although Two weeks later, it was the Casa del Rey itself that, given the growing media and political speculation, announced that Juan Carlos was in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates.

On March 2, 2022, the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office closed the three cases in progress against Juan Carlos, considering that they were either time-barred or could not be accused of "any illicit" because they took place before 2014, when the monarch was subject to the inviolability contained in article 56.3 of the Spanish Constitution.

Biography

Early years (1938-1948)

Juan Carlos (Juanito, or don Juanito, among those closest to him, to differentiate him from his father) was born in Rome on January 5, 1938, the son of Marriage between Juan de Borbón y Battenberg, Count of Barcelona, and María de las Mercedes de Borbón y Orleans. Shortly after he was born, his parents moved to Villa Gloria, a four-story house in the elegant Parioli neighborhood of Rome. He was baptized on January 26, 1938 in the chapel of the Magistral Palace of the Order of Malta in Rome by the Cardinal Secretary of State of the Holy See, Monsignor Eugenio Pacelli, future Pope Pius XII, with the names of Juan Carlos Alfonso Víctor. Maria de Bourbon. His paternal grandmother, Queen Victoria Eugenia, was the godmother, and his maternal grandfather, Carlos Tancredo of Borbón-Two Sicilies, Prince of the Two Sicilies and Infante of Spain, the godfather. In 1942, the family moved to the Swiss city of Lausanne, where he would remain until 1946, and Juan Carlos was admitted to the prestigious Le Rosey school.

Formation (1948-1969)

The Azor yacht at La Concha Bay in 1947.

In a meeting held on August 25, 1948 in the Bay of Biscay aboard the yacht Azor, Franco demanded from the Count of Barcelona that the child be brought up near him in Spain. The caudillo thus tried to project a more open image of the regime in Europe and, at the same time, control any movement against him by Don Juan. He reluctantly accepted and, thus, on November 9, 1948, at the age of ten, Juan Carlos traveled from Estoril to the Villaverde station on the Lusitania train accompanied by his new tutors, a priest and a civil guard. It was the first time he had set foot on Spanish territory.

Their destination was the Las Jarillas farm, until then owned by the Marquises of Urquijo. The general ordered that eight boys of his age who stood out for their aristocratic roots or for their intelligence be selected to be the future classmates of the illustrious student. The chosen ones were Alonso Álvarez de Toledo, son of the Marquis of Valdueza; Carlos de Borbón Dos Sicilias, first cousin on his mother's side; Jaime Carvajal y Urquijo, son of the Count of Fontanar; Fernando Falcó and Fernández de Córdoba, III Marquis of Cubas; the Valencian Alfredo Gómez Torres; the Catalan Juan José Macaya, and José Luis Leal Maldonado, who would later be Minister of Economy during the Transition. His tutors notice a certain degree of dyslexia in him and that it is difficult for him to maintain concentration in class.

After the summer of 1949, however, the deterioration of relations between Franco and Don Juan would lead the latter to decide that his son should not return to Spain for the time being.

After a year in Estoril (next to Lisbon), Juan de Borbón agreed for Juan Carlos to return to Spain in the fall of 1950 to continue his studies, this time accompanied by his younger brother Alfonso. In the 1953-1954 academic year, Juan Carlos obtained his baccalaureate. Later he did his military training at the General Military Academy of Zaragoza (1955-1957), supervised by Alfonso Armada, a high-ranking soldier who ended up becoming his mentor. From there he went to the Marín Naval Military School in Pontevedra (1957-1958) and, later, to the San Javier General Air Academy in Murcia (1958-1959). He completed his training at the University of Madrid, where he studied Political and International Law, Economics and Public Finance.

Alfonso's tragic death

The infant Juan Carlos together with his father and brother Alfonso (right) in his residence in Estoril (Portugal), in 1950.

In mid-March 1956, don Juan had managed to gather his four children in Estoril to celebrate Holy Week of that year. On the 29th, Holy Thursday, the entire family attended religious services and then retired to their family residence. Juan Carlos, who had already turned 18, and his brother Alfonso, four years younger than him, went up to the game room while they waited for dinner; they wanted to continue testing a small revolver, a.22-caliber Long Automatic Star, which someone had given them a few days before and which, against their father's express wishes, they continued to handle in secret.

Shortly after 8:00 p.m., a shot was heard. Doña Mercedes would thus recall in her memories the moment that followed the detonation: «I heard Juanito coming down the stairs telling the young lady we had then:“ No, I have to tell him!”. My life stopped.” Don Juan and she rushed upstairs and found her youngest son on the floor, unconscious and in the middle of a pool of blood: the bullet had hit her head. Don Juan tried to plug the wounds, but it was useless. Then, she took the flag of Spain that presided over the room and, after covering the body of her dead son, she turned to Juan Carlos, scolding him: "Swear to me that you didn't do it on purpose."

The following day, March 30, the Spanish embassy in Lisbon published, by express order of Franco, a brief official communiqué that read as follows:

While his Highness the Infante Alfonso cleaned a revolver that night with his brother, he shot a shot that hit his forehead and killed him in a few minutes. The accident occurred at 20.30, after the Infante returned from the religious service of Holy Thursday, during which he had received Holy Communion.

All the press echoed the official version. The newspaper Arriba headlined: "When a pistol was fired, the infante Don Alfonso de Borbón died". This version was immediately refuted by an Italian publication, which claimed that it was actually Juan Carlos who was holding the gun at the time of firing. The historiographical evidence that supports this second version, which was never denied by the family, is overwhelming.

Don Alfonso was buried in the Cascais cemetery on Saturday, March 31. After the ceremony, don Juan got on board his imposing black Bentley to travel to an indeterminate coastal area and, once there, he threw the pistol into the sea. «No policeman can examine the weapon; no judge investigates the facts; no coroner examines the corpse. Only Juan Carlos knows what happened in that room." The older brother of the Count of Barcelona, Jaime de Borbón, confronted him over dynastic issues, demanded a judicial investigation of the event.

Forty-eight hours after the tragedy, Juan Carlos, following his father's orders, returned to Zaragoza to continue his instruction.

Photographed in August 1962 at the White House Oval Office, together with Princess Sofia, the Spanish ambassador to the United States Antonio Garrigues and John F. Kennedy.

Wedding with Sofia from Greece

Sofía met Juan Carlos in 1954, on a cruise that her mother, Federica de Hannover, had organized in order to unite the monarchical families of Europe and, above all, their young generations. Six years later, they both traveled to London to attend Edward of Kent's wedding to Catherine Worsley. The protocol for celebrating the event was providential, as it made the two pair up and "the crush" arose.

On September 13, 1961, the engagement was officially announced. Eight months later, on May 14, 1962, the couple was married by the Orthodox and Catholic rites. The wedding ceremony was held in the Catholic cathedral of Athens, followed by an Orthodox ceremony in the Basilica of Santa Maria. Prior to its celebration, Franco had expressed his interest in Juan Carlos and Sofía living in Spain, so that, at the beginning of 1963, and despite the initial opposition of Juan de Borbón, the couple moved to Madrid to set his residence in the Palacio de La Zarzuela.

Prince of Spain (1969-1975)

Had the dynastic rules been complied with, the succession would have fallen to Juan Carlos's father, Juan de Borbón y Battenberg, third son and heir to the dynastic rights of Alfonso XIII. However, the not very cordial relations between Don Juan and Franco determined the jump in the line of succession and the appointment of Juan Carlos as Prince of Spain, a newly coined title with which Franco intended to save distances with respect to the liberal monarchy. Said jump was accepted by the prince, which created an internal conflict in the Royal House of Bourbon.

This conflict became explicit on March 5, 1966. For that date, a meeting of the Privy Council of the Count of Barcelona had been convened at the Palacio hotel, in Estoril, in order to commemorate the twenty-fifth anniversary of the death of Alfonso XIII. The meeting was intended to be an act of reaffirmation of the dynastic rights of Juan de Borbón and, for this, the presence of his son would constitute his express resignation to supplant his father. But Juan Carlos in the previous days pretexted that he suffered from an indisposition and declined his assistance. Juan de Borbón considered that rudeness the rupture of dynastic unity by his son. And it is that don Juan's ears still resounded with the words of Juan Carlos, on January 21, to the Times: "I will never, ever accept the crown as long as my father lives."

Franco and Juan Carlos presided over a parade on May 24, 1975. Among them, the then Army Minister, General Francisco Coloma Gallegos.

Finally, legally protected by the Succession Law of 1947, in July 1969 Franco appointed Juan Carlos as successor as king, an appointment that would be ratified by the Spanish Cortes on July 22, 1969. Before the Chamber, That same day, the young prince swore to uphold and enforce the Fundamental Laws of the Kingdom and the principles of the National Movement, that is, the Francoist ideology. In any case, the Count of Barcelona would not officially renounce his succession rights until 1977.

Juan Carlos I temporarily assumed the Head of State from July 19 to September 2, 1974, and then from October 30 to November 20, 1975 due to Franco's illnesses. On July 9, 1974, Franco was admitted for phlebitis in his right leg. Before leaving for the hospital, he called the President of the Government, Carlos Arias Navarro, and the President of the Cortes, Alejandro Rodríguez de Valcárcel, so that they could prepare the interim transfer of powers to the prince. However, two days later, Juan Carlos, who did not want an interim transfer by Franco, tried to persuade Arias to make the dictator see that power should be transferred to him definitively. Faced with the refusal of the President of the Government, the prince asked Franco not to sign the transfer decree. On July 19, the dictator's condition worsened, so Arias went to the hospital to have the transfer approved. Franco's son-in-law, Cristóbal Martínez-Bordiú, tried to prevent Arias from entering the head of state's room. He finally managed to agree, after which he convinced the dictator to cede power on an interim basis, which provoked the fury of the Marquis de Villaverde and the dictator's wife, Carmen Polo. Juan Carlos assumed the interim head of state for the first time.

After a new worsening of Franco's health, on October 23, 1975, Valcárcel and Arias Navarro went to La Zarzuela to propose to the prince that he temporarily assume the head of state again. Juan Carlos refused if the substitution was not final. On October 30, Franco developed peritonitis. Informed of the seriousness of his condition by the medical team that was treating him, the dictator ordered Prince Juan Carlos to assume his duties. Juan Carlos, after ascertaining that the dictator's illness was terminal, accepted.

On April 28, 1975, King Hassan II of Morocco announced the green march on Western Sahara on French radio. This was an operation devised by the United States Department of State that would count on its logistical and that of the CIA. On the night of October 16, the Alaouite king announced the green march in a speech on Moroccan television. On November 2, Juan Carlos visited El Aaiún and declared that Spain would respect its international commitments. The green march It took place between November 6 and 9. The plan consisted of transporting 300,000 civilians with camouflaged armed military units among them. On November 14, the Madrid Tripartite Agreement was signed, by which Spain ceded Western Sahara to Morocco and Mauritania.

Reign (1975-2014)

Proclamation as king on November 22, 1975 before the Francoist Courts

When Franco's death was announced (November 20, 1975), Juan Carlos swore to abide by the Principles of the National Movement, destined to perpetuate Francoism. He was proclaimed King of Spain by the Spanish Cortes as Juan Carlos I of Spain on November 22, 1975. Five days later, accompanied by his family, entering under the canopy and after kissing the lignum crucis, he was confirmed in an anointing and exaltation ceremony. called "Mass of the Holy Spirit", celebrated in the church of San Jerónimo el Real, in Madrid.

Based on the powers that the Francoist laws themselves granted him —and to which he was subject at the same time—, he promoted the change of regime to facilitate the advent of democracy. One of his trusted men, the jurist Torcuato Fernández Miranda, set out to seek legal support for the change of political course and thus protect the monarch from a possible accusation of perjury. The legal loophole was to be found in the Succession Law itself, which in its tenth article made it possible to reform, and even repeal, fundamental laws:

They are fundamental laws of the nation: the Fuero de los Españoles, the Fuero de Trabajo, the Constitutional Law of the Cortes, the present Law of Succession, the Law of the National Referendum and any other that in the future is promulgated conferring such rank.

Fernández-Miranda's «ruse», the «master key» that would allow us to go «from law to law», was to elaborate a new one (the eighth) that repealed all the previous ones. This is how the Law for Political Reform began and the Transition began.

First factory of Juan Carlos I as king of Spain.

On May 14, 1977, his father, the Count of Barcelona, definitively renounced his historical dynastic rights. Present at the solemn act of his abdication were, among others, Landelino Lavilla as Senior Notary of the Kingdom; after the ceremony, Don Juan declared that he was renouncing “with great love for Spain and affection for my son.” Thus, the House of Bourbon was resumed in Spain. After the proclamation of Juan Carlos I as King of Spain, Felipe became heir to the Crown and on November 1, 1977 he assumed the title of Prince of Asturias.

On June 22, 1977, Juan Carlos I sent a letter to the Shah of Iran, Reza Pahlevi, in which he confirmed his commitment to democracy, but saw the monarchy in danger, since Adolfo Suárez, the candidate of his « full confidence" and which it considered support of the monarchical system, lacked the external sources of financing available to other ideologies such as the right, the communists and the socialists, emphasizing their Marxist ideology from the latter (the PSOE defined itself as such until 1979). Finally, the king asked the Shah "on behalf of President Suárez's political party" for a loan of ten million dollars as his "personal contribution to the strengthening of the Spanish monarchy." The letter was revealed after the publication in 1991 of the diary of Asadollah Alam, Minister of the Interior and Prime Minister of the Shah.

During his reign the Spanish Constitution was approved, which defines the functions of the king, suppressing all political participation of the Crown and turning Spain into a parliamentary monarchy; Likewise, article 57 of the Constitution recognizes him as the legitimate heir of the "historical dynasty". The Constitution was ratified in a referendum on December 6 and the king sanctioned it on December 27.

In 1979 Jimmy Carter sent Senator Edmund Muskie to Europe to discuss issues affecting the US and Europe. Edmund Muskie and Ambassador Terence Todman spoke with Juan Carlos I. A secret telegram with a summary of this conversation was sent to the State Department, declassified in 2014, and released by historian Charles Powell. In the telegram it is said that Juan Carlos I was willing to cede Melilla to Morocco and turn Ceuta into an international protectorate, adding that the army would protest but that the unrest "would only last two months"; and that he could "control the situation".

One of the most delicate episodes that King Juan Carlos I had to deal with was the 1981 coup attempt, known as "F-23". On the afternoon of February 23, during the second vote for the investiture of the candidate for the Presidency of the Government Leopoldo Calvo-Sotelo, the Congress of Deputies was taken over by forces of the Civil Guard under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Antonio Tejero. Simultaneously, in the General Captaincy of the III Military Region (Valencia), Lieutenant General Jaime Miláns del Bosch occupied the streets of the city with tanks and there were various attempts at other points, such as the seizure of the Spanish Television studios in Prado del Rey..

In the early morning of the 24th, Juan Carlos I addressed the country on television to categorically disavow the coup attempt (which he believed to have the support of the Crown). The last paragraph of his message stated:

The Crown, a symbol of the permanence and unity of the Homeland, cannot tolerate in any form actions or attitudes of people who intend to forcibly interrupt the democratic process that the Constitution voted by the Spanish people determined in its day through referendum.

His intervention was providential for the future of democracy; As a consequence, the institution represented by the monarch was strengthened and was virtually consolidated not only before the citizenry but also before political sectors that until then were not very related to that form of government.

On February 9, 2012, the German weekly Der Spiegel published a diplomatic cable declassified by Germany according to which the king had shown sympathy for the coup leaders during a meeting with the then German ambassador to Spain, Lothar Lahn. In response, Rafael Spottorno, head of the King's House, denied this attributed sympathy and stated: "Neither His Majesty the King nor this House are accustomed to value the writings or opinions of third parties, which are the sole responsibility of their authors, and that in this specific case they are not consistent with the reality of some facts whose development and final corollary are public knowledge.

On September 21, 1992, the then Prince Salmán bin Abdulaziz of Saudi Arabia and Juan Carlos I of Spain inaugurated the M-30 Mosque, financed with 2 billion pesetas from King Fahd of Saudi Arabia.

Meeting of Juan Carlos and Sofia with Vladimir Putin and Liudmila Pútina in 2000, during an official visit from the latter to Spain.

In 1992, faced with speculation that Juan Carlos had a sentimental relationship with the Majorcan Marta Gayá, both the head of the King's House, Sabino Fernández Campo, and the Prime Minister, Felipe González, expressed their concern about that a campaign against the king could have been orchestrated.

The publication in 1993 by the aristocrat José Luis de Vilallonga of El Rey, the last biography authorized to date by King Juan Carlos, aroused controversy, since the Spanish edition omitted comments by Juan Carlos I about 23-F that did appear in other European editions of the book, in the same way that he put comments in Vilallonga's mouth that in other editions were attributed to Juan Carlos himself. Vilallonga had declared months before in an interview that the king had given him he had asked that, regarding 23-F, in the book, "I say [for Vilallonga] almost everything".

On December 12, 2011, after information appeared in the media about the probable charge of embezzlement, fraud, prevarication, falsehood and money laundering of the King's son-in-law, Iñaki Urdangarin, Duke Consort of Palma de Mallorca, La Zarzuela announced that it was removing him from all institutional acts, understanding that his conduct had not been "exemplary". In addition, during his traditional message on Christmas Eve, the king insisted on the need for exemplary behavior on the part of all the people with public responsibilities, after which he stated that "justice is the same for all", which was interpreted as an allusion to the probable imputation of his son-in-law. However, after his speech at the solemn opening of the X Legislature, On December 27, Juan Carlos regretted that his Christmas message had been personalized. Two days later, the investigating judge José Castro accused Iñaki Urdangarin.

During his statement before the examining magistrate in Palma, on February 25, 26 and 27, 2012, Urdangarin stated that the king had asked him to abandon his business in March 2006. However, on April 16, In 2012, three emails written by Urdangarin and provided to the examining magistrate by his former partner, Diego Torres, were made public, which would implicate the king in business in favor of his son-in-law after that date.

On April 14, 2012, Juan Carlos I suffered a hip fracture during an elephant hunt to which he had been invited in Botswana, which raised criticism from different quarters because it occurred in the worst week of the crisis economy and after a speech in which the king had asked for "rigor" and "sacrifices" to the Spanish. While the Popular Party and the Spanish Socialist Workers Party did not want to publicly assess the mishap, Izquierda Plural, Unión Progreso y Democracia and Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya announced that they would ask the Government about this matter in the Congress of Deputies. The Lendakari, Patxi López, stated that a public apology from the monarch "would not be bad". as an absolutely new episode in the entire history of royalty.

In 2013, as a result of the "close relationship" that the King had with the German businesswoman Corinna zu Sayn-Wittgenstein, some media made public that the Casa del Rey, using two million euros coming from public funds of National Heritage, deeply remodeled the estate La Angorrilla —a place very close to the Palacio de la Zarzuela, where Corinna would have lived for several years.

Abdication and retirement (2014-2019)

Juan Carlos I, together with the president of the Government Mariano Rajoy, while the latter endorsed the organic law of abdication (18 June 2014).

On June 2, 2014, Juan Carlos I expressed his desire to abdicate in favor of his son Felipe. For this, according to article 57 of the Spanish Constitution, which is the one that regulates the succession to the throne, the approval of an organic law was required by the Cortes Generales meeting in solemn session. This is how Organic Law 3/2014 would be enacted two weeks later,[2] which in the Congress of Deputies obtained 299 votes in favor, 19 votes against and 23 abstentions and in the Senate 233 votes in favor, 5 votes against and 20 abstentions.

Republican Manifestation in the Madrid Puerta del Sol on the day the decision to abdicate Juan Carlos I was announced

The same day the announcement was made public, the main republican parties, such as the IU, BNG and ERC, as well as anti-monarchist and radicalist social movements, such as the Coordinadora 25-S and the Movimiento 15-M, called demonstrations in the main capitals of the country and in other towns to claim the republic and the holding of a referendum on the form of State. In Catalonia and other communities, pro-independence forces joined. The response was massive. A few days later, on Saturday June 7, new protests were launched, which, however, registered a significantly lower participation.

In any case, it continued to hold a notable institutional role. In addition to taking part in some thirty public events, he attended some one hundred events representing the Royal Family and even the State, such as the funeral of Fidel Castro, the inauguration of Mauricio Macri or the solemn opening of the talks. of peace between the Government of Colombia and the FARC.

During this period he had his own secretariat and continued to reside in the Palacio de la Zarzuela.

At the end of May 2019, Juan Carlos officially informed Felipe VI that he was definitively retiring from public life and that he would no longer participate in official acts.

In March 2020, the Esquerra Republicana Parliamentary Group and other parties registered an initiative in the Congress of Deputies in which they requested the creation of an investigation commission; The objective was to determine the "civil, ethical and political" responsibilities of the former head of state in relation to a "donation" of 100 million in 2012 and related to the then monarch, his friend Corinna Larsen and the award of large works in Saudi Arabia..

The same month, it was the king himself, Felipe VI, who issued a statement in which he renounced his father's inheritance, "as well as any asset, investment or financial structure whose origin, characteristics or purpose may not be be in accordance with the law and the criteria of rectitude and integrity that govern their institutional and private activity”. According to the statutes of the companies Fundación Lucum and Fundación Zagazka, Felipe would be the direct beneficiary in the event of the death of his father and in charge of supporting the rest of the family. He also communicated that he withdrew from his father the allowance that he received from the budgets of the King's House.

Leaving the country (2020-present)

On August 3, 2020, the Casa del Rey published a letter in which Juan Carlos, addressing his son the King, informed of his desire to leave the country due to the growing public repercussion of "certain past events » of his «private life». With this he seemed to allude to the investigations opened in Switzerland and Spain on the alleged funds of Juan Carlos I accumulated in tax havens. For his part, the king, through the same statement, highlighted the historical importance of his father's reign and He showed him his "thank you" for the decision made.

After the news broke, various media outlets speculated that when the letter was made public, Juan Carlos had actually already left the country. At first, neither from the Casa del Rey nor from the presidency of the Government they wanted to reveal the whereabouts of King Juan Carlos. The Government, through the Minister of the Interior Fernando Grande Marlaska, came to recognize that the Spanish State continued to assume the cost of the security device for the king's father in the new destination. But on August 17, 2020, the House finally The Spanish royal confirmed that Juan Carlos I had been in the United Arab Emirates since August 3, the same day that his decision to leave Spain and establish his residence in another country was announced.

Coinciding with the appearance of this information, more than seventy former high-ranking Spanish officials signed a manifesto in support of his reign. Among the signatories were retired politicians such as Rodolfo Martín Villa, Alfonso Guerra, Matilde Fernández, Josep Piqué and Esperanza Aguirre or historians such as Juan Pablo Fusi and Carmen Iglesias.

Harassment Lawsuit

In July 2021, the Financial Times revealed that the British High Court had admitted a lawsuit by Corinna Larsen against Juan Carlos and the National Intelligence Center (CNI) for illegal surveillance in December and psychological harassment. The businesswoman denounced that since 2012 she was being watched by Spanish agents posted to London and that she had received direct threats from the head of the Spanish secret services himself, Félix Sanz Roldán on behalf of the monarch.

Weekend visit

In May 2022, he returned to Spain on a private visit, including a meeting at the Zarzuela Palace with his son, King Felipe VI.

Assessment

Among historians and chroniclers of the time, there is a general consensus that with the first part of his reign Juan Carlos left a "historical" legacy for the Spanish people, who in turn appreciated his charisma and his contribution to modernization of the country. It was thanks to this charisma that the monarch reached his highest level of popularity in 1992, after solemnly inaugurating the Olympic Games in Barcelona and attending a multitude of sporting events.

In the words of the journalist Álvaro de Cózar (XRey, chap. 8: «The strange years»):

The monarch screams, suffers in competitions and the whole country sees him jumping the protocol to celebrate the success of the athletes and embrace them [sic]: a brand is consolidated, Campechanoand a movement, Juancarlism. If the king was once the king of a people, it was probably that summer of 1992.

That wouldn't last long. That fortunate period of his reign was followed by another more murky one, plagued by endless irregular behaviors; The journalist José Antonio Zarzalejos describes this behavior as follows:

In the senectud [Juan Carlos] perhaps lost the references of reality, he disobeyed and, in doing so, continued with that repeated destiny of his ancestors in which, on the dignity of his post, the pulsions of the vulgar men and women were imposed: greed, promiscuity and prepotence.

Citizen trust

Currency of a hundred pesetas of the year 1988 with the portrait of Juan Carlos I.

Bust by Juan Carlos I located in the town hall of Vigo.

According to various opinion polls, during most of his reign the king enjoyed a very high level of popularity in Spain and in certain parts of Latin America, where he was considered the most popular leader in 2008. His This figure, considered a guarantee of order and stability, always enjoyed high popular support, even during the first years of the economic crisis that began in 2008, while there was deep public disenchantment towards the rest of the State institutions.

However, this trend underwent its first drastic change in April 2012, after it was revealed that he had been involved in a hunt in Botswana during the height of the economic crisis. At that time, the support of the population, which was at 74%, fell to 52%. Despite the fact that the approval percentage grew slowly and stood at 58% in December of the same year, in 2013 this percentage plummeted. In April of that year, for the first time, and despite continuing to be the figure of the Spanish political system with the best evaluation —above the town halls, the Parliament, the Government, the political parties and the political representatives—, the majority of the population (53%) disapproved of the way in which the king carried out his functions, compared to 42% who did approve. However, two months after this data, citizen confidence rose eight percentage points to stand at 50% of approval. Despite being far from the data obtained in previous years, citizen support was still higher than that obtained by the rest of the institutions of the Spanish political system and also higher than that obtained by other heads of state in their respective countries (as in the United States, France or Italy).

In an opinion poll conducted in June 2014, a few days after announcing his abdication, King Juan Carlos scored 6.9 out of 10 when it came to qualifying the respect that his figure inspired among the public.

Despite the resignation, the institution of the Crown did not regain its lost popularity; in fact, in the barometer of the Center for Sociological Research in April 2015, it barely obtained a 4.34 out of 10. Since that year, the organization no longer asks Spaniards about the Head of State.

Criticism

Some NGOs and social movements maintained that, during his visits to Morocco, the king acted as an intermediary for the Spanish government in the sale of arms to this country that would have been used to repress the Saharawi people. He has also been criticized. his well-known friendship with the royal families of Middle Eastern countries such as Saudi Arabia, Kuwait or the United Arab Emirates, countries with authoritarian regimes, highlighting the case of Saudi Arabia, whose absolute monarchy controls all state agencies and has been for years accused of massive corruption and of constituting a feudal and unfree regime.

Criticism of the king has also often included the Spanish media, which according to its critics give a deliberately positive image of his figure, which even some foreign media have pointed out as a true cult of personality.

Mural with criticism of Juan Carlos I

Other criticisms referred to the criminal irresponsibility of the monarch, enshrined in the Spanish Constitution, which made him unimputable for any crime he might commit. In addition, various authors have pointed out the existing taboo in the Spanish media regarding to the figure of the king. His role in 23-F, the failed coup that took place in 1981, has also been criticized in some sectors, since the king would have previously known of its existence or could even have been a participant. In the same way, some authors considered inappropriate the Why don't you shut up? that the king snapped at Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez at the XVII Ibero-American Summit.

In 2007, The Times, one of the UK's largest newspapers, criticized the "luxurious lifestyle" of the king and the "idealization" that he has been made of his figure for 30 years, while calling him a "playboy".

According to a journalistic investigation published in 2014 by the Público newspaper, which had access to classified documents, King Juan Carlos I would have mediated between the military dictatorship of Jorge Rafael Videla in Argentina and the government of Spain presided over by Adolfo Suárez since 1976. According to the investigation and confidential documents, Spain would have provided financial aid through commercial and diplomatic agreements. In turn, the king would also have acted as an intermediary between the Argentine dictatorship and large Spanish businessmen and bankers, among whom would find Emilio Botín Sr., owner of Banco Santander. Argentina's need to obtain foreign currency would come from the large expenses that its political repression programs entailed in those years (see Flights of death and Disappeared during the National Reorganization Process ). The investigation also pointed to the exchange of gifts and decorations between senior officials of both n ations—for example, the king in 1978 awarded Videla the grand cross of the Order of Military Merit and the necklace of the Order of Isabel la Católica, while the then-Prince Felipe (Felipe VI) was appointed Midshipman by the Argentine Navy Honoris Causa in 1981. Spain would also have given courses to 33 Argentine soldiers between 1976 and 1983 (already in democracy) participating in the repression in their country.

The Botswana Crash

Okavango delta map, north of Botswana.

In the early hours of Friday, April 13, 2012, Juan Carlos suffered a fall when he tripped over a step in the dark, and this domestic mishap would unleash the biggest crisis of his reign up to then. The reason was that it had occurred in a luxury bungalow in Botswana, where the king had gone with some friends to practice elephant hunting while Spain was plunged into a serious economic crisis that began in 2008.

Given the severity of the fall and the monarch's advanced age (74 years), it was decided to repatriate him to Spain. He was admitted to the USP San José hospital in Madrid, where he had to undergo two surgeries to replace a hip prosthesis and repair a triple fracture of the femur. When he left the room after being discharged, he went to a television camera that was waiting for him and apologized with these words: «I am very sorry; I was wrong and it will not happen again. This phrase would eventually become one of the most famous of his reign.

Expedition details

At first, neither the King's House nor the Government reported the trip, and no reliable official version was ever given of what had happened during those five days of stay in the African country. The information available comes from journalistic investigations. This is how it was learned that the entourage had left Monte Carlo in a private jet that landed thirteen hours later in Maun, in the north of the African country, where it took a helicopter to the Qorokwe camp, in the Okavango delta. Juan Carlos was accompanied by his lover, Corinna zu Sayn-Wittgenstein, his friend Philip Adkins (Corinna's first husband) and Mohamed Eyad Kayali, a Syrian construction magnate, representative of the Royal House of Saudi Arabia in Spain and a man of trust of Prince Mohamed bin Salmán. Corinna also traveled with her ten-year-old son Alexander, whom Juan Carlos had invited as a gift for his tenth birthday.

On the 11th, the monarch brought down a fifty-year-old elephant after shooting it seven times with his 470-caliber Rigby Express rifle. On the 12th, the Syrian tycoon reported a second specimen and, the next day (while the rest of the expedition urgently returned to Spain), from a third party, which was originally intended for Adkins.

Cost

According to information from the digital newspaper El Español, the cost per person was at least 50,000 euros. For ABC, hunting an elephant cost in 2012 about 37,000 euros. For her part, Ana Romero, in her book Endgame, maintains that "among elephants, camp, accompaniment, helicopters, the jet that took them from Monte Carlo to Maun and the extras of the escorts and the doctor, the safari of just six days was around three quarters of a million euros ».

All the protagonists assured that it was Kayali who paid all the expenses except the plane, which was paid for by Adkins. But these statements did not mitigate the discomfort of certain media: first towards the monarch, for accepting such onerous gifts; and then towards the Government, for not informing the escorts and the intensive care doctor who, as always, traveled with him of the cost of having moved to Africa.

Consequences on your reputation

The photograph of the monarch and the director of Rann Safaris posing in front of a dead elephant with its trunk placed against a tree was featured on the front page of numerous news outlets and marked the beginning of the decline of his reign in the eyes of Spanish public opinion.

In those April days, the political and economic situation in Spain was very delicate. Citizens were losing purchasing power due to the increase in taxes while witnessing the application of a tax amnesty decreed by the Government of Mariano Rajoy, unemployment reached 27 percent of the active population and the Spanish economy was one step away from being intervened by the European Union. Precisely, on Wednesday the 11th, the same day that the monarch claimed his prey, the printed version of the newspaper El País had a headline in five columns: “The markets accentuate the attack”, and in subheadings it added: “ The Government's announcement of new cuts fails to calm the markets» and «The Ibex falls to its minimum in three years and the risk premium shoots up to 433 points».

There was disgust, disappointment and even anger towards the monarch, especially if some of his last statements were remembered: in a speech delivered just a month before the trip he had stated: «50% of young people are unemployed and that is something that sometimes makes me lose sleep"; and in his last Christmas message he had declared: "Above all, people with public responsibilities have a duty to observe appropriate behavior, exemplary behavior."

In an editorial published on Saturday the 14th, the newspaper El Mundo stated:

We need to know the concrete circumstances to further nuance our views, but, from what we have been able to know, this is an irresponsible journey, carried out at the most inopportune moment. And this is because the spectacle of a monarch hunting elephants in Africa is very rare when the economic crisis in our country causes so many problems to the Spanish, including some dramatic family situations. This conveys an image of indifference and frivolity that the Head of State can never give.

The image of the monarchy plummeted to historic lows. In the CIS barometer of April 2013, Spaniards rated their trust in the institution with 3.68 out of 10, in contrast to the 7.48 it had achieved in November 1995.

Trip to Polynesia

According to information from the newspaper El Confidencial on July 20, 2020, Juan Carlos I, to celebrate his 78th birthday, enjoyed a trip to French Polynesia in January 2016, a trip whose expenses They had been paid for with money of dubious origin. These expenses, corresponding to five return plane tickets for Juan Carlos and his four escorts to the capital, Papeete, amounted to about 32,900 euros.

In November of the previous year, Juan Carlos's entourage, through the lawyer Dante Canonica, contacted the Zagatka Foundation so that this company would take charge of the disbursement. Credit Suisse, the bank that managed the associated account, paid the stipulated amount to the offshore company Fathomless Advisory Services Limited and, from this, to another company called Cadenza Evening Limited. The latter was managed by Philip Adkins, Corinna's first husband and a friend of the King, who had bought the plane tickets a month earlier.

Suspicions of corruption

The SSIF Fund

The sovereign wealth fund of the Saudi Arabian General Investment Authority, initially named Fondo Hispano-Saudí de Infraestructuras (SSIF), was created during the official visit of Juan Carlos to Saudi Arabia in April 2006 and was sealed two months later, when the Saudi monarch returned the visit to Spain. Originally conceived as a consortium of Spanish-Saudi companies, it was presented at the El Pardo Palace in June 2007, although by then its headquarters had already been established on the island of Guernsey, a tax haven located in the Canal de la Stain. The invitation to Spanish investors had been processed directly from the Palacio de la Zarzuela. The project consisted of creating an investment fund of 1000 million dollars "for the development of investments in energy infrastructures (particularly renewable energies), transport and telecommunications", and as an intermediary of operations there was, among other consultants, Corinna Larsen.

Three years later, Spanish investors complained to fund managers about repeated delays in contributions by their Saudi partners. The Spanish consortium had disbursed more than 15 million dollars when it decided to sign a cancellation agreement: in exchange for completely liquidating the commitments made, the defrauded businessmen waived the amounts already disbursed and, in addition, would pay 0.85% of the contributions totals compromised. The total amount of the losses amounted to 21 million dollars. This amount included the bill of the German-Danish businesswoman, which amounted to about five million dollars.

Case of Corinna Tapes

In July 2018, the digital media OkDiario and El Español made public the recordings of a meeting that had taken place three years earlier in London between Corinna zu Sayn-Wittgenstein, the commissioner José Manuel Villarejo and the former president of Telefónica Juan Villalonga, a mutual friend of both. In these audios, Corinna accuses Juan Carlos I of charging commissions, which would amount to 100 million euros, for the award of the construction works of the Mecca-Medina high-speed train line, as well as hiding his identity in Switzerland. alleged fortune using front men and front companies.

During the conversation, the German-Danish businesswoman affirms that the king had used her to buy numerous properties (in Morocco and in other countries), even behind her back, and that he was not doing it out of generosity, but because Corinna had its tax domicile in Monte Carlo. Once the sentimental relationship ended, the king would have required him to transfer her assets to her cousin Álvaro de Orleans y Borbón, also resident in Monaco. The audios seem to reveal the businesswoman's fear that if she made the transfer she would be involved in a crime of money laundering.

Geneva Papers Case

On March 3, 2020, the Genevan newspaper Tribune de Genève (TdG) revealed that, following the dissemination of the recordings of Commissioner Villarejo to Corinna Larsen in London in 2015 (case of the Corinna tapes), the chief prosecutor (premier procureur) of the canton of Geneva, Yves Bertossa, was conducting a secret criminal investigation into a possible crime of aggravated money laundering: the judicial case P14783/2018, also known by the transalpine press as "the secret Geneva papers". It was about finding out an alleged donation of 100 million dollars from the then King of Arabia Saudi, Abdalá Bin Abdelaziz, who had been deposited on August 8, 2008 in an account of a Panamanian bank branch of the Genevan private bank Mirabaud. The account had been opened the day before by the Swiss fund manager Arturo Fasana in the name of an instrumental entity called the Lucum Foundation, also based in Panama. The beneficiary was the then King of Spain, Juan Carlos I.

The Swiss prosecutor suspected that there was a relationship between the "gift" from the Saudi monarch and the award of the works for the "AVE" to Mecca. One of the hypotheses being considered was that the amount was a percentage that the Saudi king had "reserved" for the monarch and the commissioner Larsen in exchange for convincing the consortium to substantially reduce its proposal. Since he finally agreed to the discount, the couple received their commission from the Saudis. In the words of El País journalist José María Irujo in the documentary “El virus de corona”,

supposedly, the Spanish companies that got the work made a 30% reduction in their final application. That one. pool of 12 Spanish companies led by Renfe, Adif, OHL... got the contract of the century. Companies from all over the world had been presented: Chinese, French, German...; the French and the Spaniards arrived at the end and, in the final application, won the pool Spanish.

For María Peral, from El Español, it would be an overcommission paid by the winning bidders. Although the operation was not formalized until October 2011, the tender, agreed at 6,736 million euros, took place in 2006.

In July 2021, El Confidencial revealed that Bertossa had discovered another account related to Juan Carlos, this time managed through the Panamanian company Lactuva SA. This firm, "specialized in setting up opaque networks", would have received three transfers from Zagatka, whose nominal owner was Álvaro de Orleáns, ordered directly by the former head of state to allegedly "help his family member financially."

In contrast to the Swiss justice system, the Spanish Anti-Corruption Prosecutor made little progress in its investigations, which immediately came to a standstill; The Public Ministry argued that they could never count on the collaboration of Saudi Arabia to access the specifications for the award of the AVE contract. And neither did the State Tax Administration Agency (AEAT). According to calculations by the Union of Technicians of the Ministry of Finance (Gestha), the beneficiary, by virtue of the legislation in force in the Community of Madrid and considering his own patrimonial situation, would have had to pay close to 52 million euros (80%) in tax concept.

Finally, unable to reliably establish the relationship between the amount received from Saudi Arabia and the AVE contracts, prosecutor Bertossa decided, in mid-2021, to close the investigations. The Mirabaud bank was sanctioned with a fine of 50,000 Swiss francs for the formal negligence of not documenting the receipt of such a large sum, but all the suspects were exonerated of all responsibility. Various Spanish prosecutors showed their surprise at the decision of the "ruthless" and "meticulous" judge to abandon the case despite considering both the receipt of the money and the "will to cover up" on the part of those investigated to be proven in his order, and without not even having summoned to declare the greatest beneficiary of the entire financial network, King Juan Carlos.

Frontmen

Bertossa's investigations were directed in the first place towards the presumed intermediaries used for the management and availability of money. In addition to Corinna herself, the following were involved in these maneuvers:

• Arturo Fasana: manager of great fortunes through his financial consulting firm Rhône Gestion. He was seized in the Gürtel case as the manager of the Spanish businessman Francisco Correa, head of the Gürtel plot. He also appeared in Panama's papers as advisor to Jordi Pujol.
• Dante Canonica: lawyer, with tax address in Monaco. Founding partner of the firm Canonica Valticos de Preux, who advises clients such as Mohamed Al-Fayed, Alicia Koplowitz or the Albertos (Alberto Cortina and Alberto Alcocer), took over the commission of Juan Carlos to create the opaque financial structure that would be responsible for receiving the donation. He also had to testify before the Spanish National Court for the case Gürtel.
• Alvaro de Orleans y Borbón: distant cousin of Juan Carlos de Borbón and resident in Monaco. In 2003, after charging 50 million Swiss francs for acting as an intermediary in the sale of Banco Zaragozano to Barclays Bank londinense, it constituted the foundation Zagatka. He appeared in Panama's papers as the director of a network of opaque societies settled in tax havens to perform real estate operations on the coast of Gabon.

Shell companies

Lucum Foundation

It was incorporated on July 31, 2008 by the manager Arturo Fasana, who opened a bank account, with the number 505523, in a Panamanian branch of the Mirabaud bank linked to this company. Fasana himself appeared as president, and as secretary and legal advisor, Dante Canonica. However, according to the internal statutes signed by them and initialed by Juan Carlos, the true economic beneficiaries were the king himself and, in the event of his death, his son Felipe. One week then the entry of the suspicious donation was recorded.

Four years later, Mirabaud executives, faced with the possible negative repercussions for their entity's reputation, especially after the accident in Botswana, asked Fasana and Canonica for the foundation to rescue the funds and dissociate itself from the bank. The king, who also "did not feel comfortable" with the growing collaboration of Swiss banks with the supervisory authorities of the European Union, then began to empty the account. Among his "minor" movements, that of one million euros granted to a Genevan lover and two million to his ex-lover and friend Marta Gayá was registered. However, most of it, 65 million euros, went to an account of the Solare Investors Corporation (which Larsen was behind), at the Gonet y Cie bank, in Nassau (Bahamas). The journalist from El País José María Irujo, in the documentary «El virus de the crown", he affirms that, in turn, 39 of those millions were transferred to a bank in the United States.

Finally, in September 2012 the account was canceled and the company was dissolved.

Zagatka Foundation

Zagatka was founded in 2003 in the capital of Liechtenstein, Vaduz, by Álvaro de Orleans, the king's cousin. On July 28, 2009, Arturo Fasana, on behalf of this company, opened the bank account numbered 0251-798208-9 at a Geneva branch of Credit Suisse, with Álvaro de Orleans as the "effective" or "indirect" beneficiary.. According to The Telegraph, among the contracting conditions, an availability of up to 150,000 euros every two months "for personal needs and invoices" was stated. In this way, anyone with a credit card linked to the account could withdraw money in cash from an ATM or endorse the expenses of his social activity without leaving a trace.

According to the investigations of the Geneva prosecutor, Zagatka served, in addition to defraying these personal expenses, to collect alleged illegal commissions, make debt investments, acquire foreign currency, buy shares of large multinationals and, especially, hire private jets and invoices of hotels all over the world for Juan Carlos; only on flights, five million euros were paid between 2016 and 2019. The journalist Manuel Cerdán, closely linked to Commissioner Villarejo, learned that Orleans gave the address of King Juan Carlos in all its operations with Zagatka: «Palacio de la Zarzuela, 28071-Madrid". Although the aristocrat has always defended that his objective was to help European royal families, the monarch himself, with his "voluntary regularization" of February 2021, ended up acknowledging that Zagatka had been hiding undeclared funds.

Political and judicial repercussions

The case alerted various political and judicial instances in Spain:

• July 22, 2018: The National Hearing incorporates the revelations to the cause 96/2017 (case Villarejo) in a separate piece, the piece Carol.
• July 23, 2018: The U.S. Podemos, the Republican Esquerra of Catalonia, PDeCAT, Compromís and Bildu, which included a total of 90 deputies, register the petition for the opening of a commission of inquiry at the Congress of Deputies.
• July 26, 2018: Catalan training In Comú asks a question whether the socialist government of Pedro Sánchez intends to investigate the previous executive; such an investigation would aim to determine whether the commissioner went to the London meeting on behalf of the Government of Mariano Rajoy "and clarify, therefore, whether he requested or authorized that meeting".
• September 4, 2018: The Congress of Deputies, with the votes of the Popular Party, PSOE and Citizens, rejects the creation of the commission of inquiry invoking the inviolability of Juan Carlos when the events supposedly happened.
• September 7, 2018: Judge Diego de Agea files the case on the basis of the "falta of credibility" of the testimony of the examination of King Juan Carlos, in the prescription of the alleged tax crimes and in the absence of signs of criminality of some of the behaviors.
• March 31, 2020: PSOE, PP and Vox reject, for the third time in a month, the petition to create a commission of inquiry alleging that the lower chamber cannot control the king by virtue of his inviolability.
• 8 June 2020: The Office of the Supreme Court opens pre-trial proceedings for two possible crimes, fiscal fraud and money laundering, committed by Juan Carlos following the award of phase II of the "AVE del Desierto" works.
• June 16, 2020: Citizens join in a new rejection, which this time says to be based on the "criteria of the lower chamber's lawyers" to continue to investigate the activities of King Juan Carlos.
• July 3, 2020: The Catalan cultural institution Òmnium Cultural presents to the Supreme Court a criminal complaint against Juan Carlos I to investigate the origin of his fortune abroad. At the same time, it requests the Swiss Federal Council to block its accounts.
• 27 July 2020. The Central Instruction Court of the National Audience agrees to reopen the piece Carol., which had been provisionally filed by Judge De Agea on September 7, 2018, at the emergence of new signs of cohecho. The head of the court quotes Juan Villalonga, José Manuel Villarejo, his partner Rafael Redondo and Corinna Larsen as charged.
• 28 October 2020. The investigating judge, Manuel García-Castellón, after relying on the favorable report of the Anticorruption Prosecutor's Office, decrees the provisional dismissal of the piece Carol. "for lack of evidence."
• 11 December 2020. United Podemos and six other parties register at the Congress of Deputies a petition to create a commission of inquiry on the use by Juan Carlos of opaque credit cards. The training argued that, since such alleged irregular use would have occurred after its abdication, the Bureau no longer had "excusa possible" to refuse. A month later, the legal services of the lower chamber issued a favorable report to the petition, but the votes against the PSOE, together with those of the PP and Vox, again prevented it from being admitted to the proceedings.
• March 5, 2021. United Nations Podemos and various nationalist formations register at the Congress the request of a commission of inquiry on possible tax crimes committed by Juan Carlos regarding the hiring and payment by the Zagatka Foundation of private flights after its abdication. The petition was based on the fact that payments to the Tax Agency ordered by King Juan Carlos from Abu Dhabi could involve the confession of crimes against the Public Treasury.

Royal Black Cards

On November 3, 2020, the digital newspaper elDiario.es revealed that the Spanish Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office was tracking the financial movements of several non-nominal credit cards (black) that several members of the royal family had been using, including King Juan Carlos. The suspicious movements corresponded to the years 2016-2018, so, if they were punishable, they would not be protected by the constitutional inviolability that had protected the monarch until 2014. Given that the volume that had circulated through this opaque channel exceeded by at least three years 250,000 euros per year, the alleged fraud due to undeclared transfers to the Public Treasury would be considered a tax offense, punishable in Spain with up to five years from prison.

In addition to Juan Carlos, these cards were used by Queen Sofía, the princesses Elena and Cristina and Elena's children. Among the expenses charged were travel, meals and accommodation in luxury hotels. Sofia thus paid for her trips to London, her habitual residence. For their part, the sisters and nephews of Felipe VI would have charged numerous receipts for taxi rides, purchases in shopping centers and piano lessons. Likewise, the Infanta Elena bought with those funds a competition mare for her daughter, Victoria Federica. Regarding the operation to purchase the animal, baptized with the name of Dibelunga, and the high expenses involved in caring for it, an investigation was opened for possible money laundering.

The first proceedings had been secretly initiated at the beginning of 2019 by the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office within file 12/2019, before going to the Supreme Court prosecutor's office. As a result of the investigations, it was learned that the funds came from the Mexican-British businessman Allen de Jesús Sanginés-Krause and that, in order to hide the trace of the real destination of the money from the AEAT, the transfers were not made directly, but through a collaborator of the Casa del Rey, the colonel of the Air Force and former aide-de-camp to the monarch Nicolás Murga Mendoza.

Source of funds

The donations came from British-Mexican businessman Allen de Jesús Sanginés-Krause, a former Goldman Sachs executive and real estate investor. The personal and business relations between the two date back to 2006. Sanginés actively worked in the creation of the SSIF fund, and also in the attempt of the Russian oil conglomerate LUKoil to become a majority shareholder in the Spanish company Repsol in 2008. Sanginés tried to convince the Russian shareholders to contribute the 9,000 million euros necessary to materialize the acquisition, while Juan Carlos was in charge of putting pressure on the President of the Executive, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, to give the green light to the operation. Finally, the Government, through the Ministers of Industry, Miguel Sebastián, and of Economy and Finance, Pedro Solbes (also backed by negative reports from the CNI), ended up rejecting the project, which, according to government sources, threatened to "compromise the Repsol's Spanishness" and "put the heating switch in Spanish houses in the hands of the Russian Government".

This is how the journalist Diego Rodríguez Veiga in El Español assessed the maneuvers of the then King of Spain:

It is paradoxical that Juan Carlos I, the Spanish monarch, intervened in a movement that, later, was considered to benefit Russia rather than Spain. The same ended up happening with the Saudi fund, which benefited the Arabs and made Spanish companies lose money. This type of action, with the passage of time and with perspective, has now become judicial cases that are piled up at the emeritus table because, as it is being shown, the Head of State had just taken personal hedge in his efforts to, allegedly, represent the interests of Spain.

Killua Castle before restoration.

For both friendship and business reasons, Juan Carlos held several off-schedule meetings with Sanginés-Krause at the Palacio de la Zarzuela and at the La Angorilla country house, which had been rehabilitated to serve as Corinna's residence Larsen. For his part, the Mexican financier, on the occasion of his 58th birthday, invited Juan Carlos to his castle in Killua (Ireland) in 2017, who came in the company of his ex-lover and friend Marta Gayá. Three years later, the Spanish Prosecutor's Office, in the framework of the investigations it had undertaken into personal expenses of King Juan Carlos paid irregularly by Sanginés, was interested in the financial details of that trip.

Regularization

On December 9, 2020, the law firm of the lawyer Javier Sánchez-Junco, on behalf of King Juan Carlos, filed a tax declaration "without prior request" which resulted in a debt of 678,393.72 euros. The strategy was to avoid the imputation of a money laundering crime against his client, although this also implied the implicit recognition of the crime. In February, he made a second transaction of more than 4 million euros to regularize his situation with the AEAT, for money earned in previous years. Some sources suggest that this second payment would eliminate the possibility of prosecuting Juan Carlos criminally.

Trust in Jersey

In addition to the investigation into the commissions for the construction of the AVE to Mecca and the proceedings opened for the real origin of the funds from the Royal Black cards, in November 2020 the Second Chamber of the Supreme Court opened a third line of investigation into irregular funds from the king. The Executive Service of the Commission for the Prevention of Money Laundering and Monetary Offenses (Sepblac) had discovered a new hidden fortune on the island of Jersey, considered a tax haven. It was a trust worth about ten million euros that had been registered by the private administrator and friend of King Manuel Prado y Colón de Carvajal, and among whose headlines appeared Juan Carlos I. The suspicious movements took place in 2005, that is, while he was King of Spain.

Personal fortune

In September 2012, the New York newspaper The New York Times published an article entitled "Chastened King Seeks Redemption, for Spain and His Monarchy". '). In the text, released five days after the monarch visited the newspaper to explain the Spanish situation and improve the country's image, it was indicated, among other information, that "the fortune of the Spanish Royal Family has been estimated at up to 2,300 million dollars [almost 1,800 million euros]”. Sources from the New York newspaper later indicated that the calculation had not been the product of its own investigation, but was based on an average of already published figures.

The only publications to date that had ventured a figure that would assess the fortune of the King of Spain had been the magazines Eurobusiness (2000 and 2002) and Forbes (2003). It was the latter that justified the inclusion of the Spanish monarch in its 2003 lists based on data published a year earlier by Eurobusiness, which spoke of the monarch's personal fortune valued at 545 million euros and who controlled family assets worth another 1,136 million:

The family of King Juan Carlos inherited an important number of properties in Spain and other places in Europe, including one on the island of Mallorca [...]. He also recovered works of art. But the most important source of the fortune of the Spanish Royal Family comes from an organized foundation, in the late 40s, for the restoration of the monarchy by General Franco. The King has a personal fortune valued at 545 million euros and controls family property worth another 1.136 million euros.

On that occasion, the Government and the King's House were aware of the information and reacted by denying it. The Spanish ambassador in the United Kingdom, the country where the magazine was published, sent a letter to the director of the magazine in which he conveyed "the astonishment of the House of His Majesty the King of Spain" and described as "insane" the estimate of Eurobusiness, to which it added the possible explanation for the "erroneous" calculation of the magazine:

The triggered figure of €1.7 billion can only be explained for having mistakenly understood that the public goods owned by the National Heritage, of the Spanish State, are private property of His Majesty the King, which is evidently inaccurate [...] His Majesty makes annually, like the rest of the Spaniards obliged to do so, the corresponding declarations of income and property.

Regarding the question of whether the real estate of National Heritage was included in the estimate of fortune, the article in The New York Times states: «a sum [the 2,300 million dollars] that its proponents claim it was inflated by the inclusion of government property".

In line with the government's opinion, the Spanish general press described the data as "exorbitant" and "implausible", "incorrect calculation", "wrong figure" and "inflated" or "shocking". However, other voices, such as that of the economist Roberto Centeno, who accused the monarch and his former administrator, Manuel Prado y Colón de Carvajal, of charging, since the late 1970s, while he was CEO of the Campsa oil company, a percentage for oil imported by the Spanish State from Middle Eastern countries; according to his statements, the commission was between 1 and 2 dollars per barrel, which meant about two million euros per ship. In 2015, a conversation was leaked, recorded by the National Intelligence Center, during which the businessman Javier de la Rosa affirmed that the economic adviser Arturo Fasana, implicated in several corruption and money laundering schemes, "saved" at some point 300 million to Juan Carlos I. Centeno maintains that, after taking responsibility, in the exercise of his responsibilities, of the contracting of a shipment of Kuwaiti oil, the then Minister of Finance, Francisco Fernández Ordóñez, sent him a call to attention so that he would not formalize any oil supply contract in the Middle East again because —he warned him— that land it was "reserved" for Manuel Prado and Colón de Carvajal. According to the economist, Fernández Ordóñez even told him: «Look, Manolo Prado has been here, he found out that you were in Kuwait and he has set me up a chicken that you cannot imagine; He has told me that Saudi Arabia and the Emirates are exclusively his and no one but him can negotiate a barrel, so don't even think of doing anything like that again ». And he ends by assuring that Juan Carlos I, through his representative and private administrator, Manuel de Prado, "had a monopoly on our extra supplies during the oil crisis", and that "the Treasury paid for the oil what it put on the bill, without going into any inquiry and even less committing the vulgarity of saying that it could be bought cheaper when the achiever was Prado».

In the summer of 2021, the digital newspaper Público revealed the results of a series of investigations into the origin of said fortune. The successive installments, signed by the journalist and writer Carlos Enrique Bayo, were titled as follows: "I: King Juan Carlos I forged his fortune by selling arms to Arab countries together with Colón de Carvajal and Khashoggi"; "II: Manuel Prado transferred the management of the king's fortune to Alberto Alcocer and right after Arturo Fasana created the 'Soleado' account"; "III: Juan Carlos I took 52 million commission for the sale of Banco Zaragozano and promoted the 'foundations ' Zagatka y Lucum"; "IV: Juan Carlos I interceded with the Constitutional Court to free 'Los Albertos' [Alberto Cortina and Alberto Alcocer] in prison the year he received 100 million in an opaque account »; and « V: Juan Carlos I used National Heritage to pay luxuries for his lovers and the expenses of his palaces, yachts and trips ».

Private and family life

Offspring

Juan Carlos and Sofia, photographed alongside their three children (Philipe, Cristina and Elena), in 1975

On May 14, 1962, he married Princess Sofia of Greece and Denmark in Athens, with whom he had three children:

• Elena de Borbón and Greece, Infanta de España y Duquesa de Lugo; n. 20 December 1963. Married with Jaime de Marichalar and Sáenz de Tejada in 1995, who was divorced in 2010.
  • Felipe Juan Froilán de Marichalar and Borbón, great of Spain; n. 17 July 1998.
  • Victoria Federica de Marichalar y Borbón, grande de España; n. 9 de septiembre de 2000.

• Cristina de Borbón and Greece, Infanta de España; n. 13 June 1965. Married with Iñaki Urdangarin Liebaert in 1997, which was separated in 2022.
  • Juan Urdangarin and Borbón, great of Spain; n. 29 September 1999.
  • Pablo Urdangarin and Borbón, great of Spain; n. 6 December 2000.
  • Miguel Urdangarin and Borbón, great of Spain; n. 30 April 2002.
  • Irene Urdangarin and Borbon, Spain's largest; n. 5 June 2005.

• Philip of Bourbon and Greece, king of Spain as Philip VI; n. 30 January 1968. Married with Letizia Ortiz Rocasolano in 2004.
  • Leonor de Borbón y Ortiz, Princess of Asturias; n. 31 October 2005.
  • Sofia de Borbón y Ortiz, Infanta de España; n. 29 April 2007.

Hobbies

The Fortuna yacht in 2021.

King Juan Carlos participated as a sailor in the 1972 Munich Olympic Games, competing in the Dragon class with his boat Fortuna. The two crew members of him were Félix Gancedo and Gonzalo Fernández de Córdoba Later he was part of the Bribón team. After several decades of high competition, including a brief retirement between 2011 and 2016, Juan Carlos I was proclaimed sailing world champion in 2017, at the age of seventy-nine, in the category of classic 6-meter boats at the World Cup. from Vancouver (Canada).

Another of his great passions has been skiing, which has cost him some mishaps.

In addition to sailing and skiing, his third great hobby has been hunting, although this has given rise to frequent controversies: thus, in addition to the one unleashed as a result of his trip to Botswana in 2012, on October 8, 2004 he participated in a bear hunt in Romania; in 2004 he paid 7,000 euros to kill one of the last living bison in Europe in Poland; and in 2006, various Russian media outlets accused him of having killed a drugged bear, which led to to the opening of an investigation by the Russian authorities. The Casa del Rey described such information as "ridiculous". As a result of these controversies, on July 21, 2012, the Spanish section of the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) decided to withdraw the position of honorary president, a position he had held the king since the founding of the NGO.

For a time he was a radio amateur.

Extramarital affairs

In 2008, the ex-colonel of the Spanish Army, graduate of the General Staff, military historian and writer Amadeo Martínez Inglés attributed two main weaknesses to the Juancarlista monarchy: on the one hand, «the rapid (not to say meteoric), incomprehensible, and presumably criminal, enrichment of the Spanish Royal Household»; and, on the other, "the scandalous sentimental life of its owner, King Juan Carlos I, which has resulted over the years in a multitude of shady extramarital relationships." Also the close friend of the monarch Manuel ( sic) Bouza, to justify this attitude of Don Juan Carlos, commented that a king "is much more exposed than any of us to sieges and proposals" and, furthermore, "he had it very easy: the crown impresses with its shine".

Throughout his reign, Juan Carlos has maintained various sentimental relationships outside of marriage. The best known are listed below.

Liliane Sartiau (governess). The romance began in Paris in the spring of 1956. After almost ten years of sporadic encounters, when the then prince was already the father of Elena and Cristina, Liliane became pregnant with a girl, Ingrid Jeanne, who in 2012 promoted a lawsuit in which she wanted the monarch to recognize her as a natural daughter. Her petition reached the Supreme Court, which finally dismissed it.

Anna María Bach Ramon, from the Catalan gentry, with whom he would have had relations at the age of 18. Albert Solà i Jiménez would have been born from this supposed relationship in 1956, he was later given up for adoption and became famous for having filed numerous lawsuits before courts and tribunals claiming through DNA tests his recognition as the king's son, some, according to the person concerned., carried out in 2017 by the CNI with which paternity would be proven up to 99.9%. All these lawsuits were finally dismissed by the Supreme Court and the Constitutional Court, due to lack of a DNA test, inconsistency in the account and concealment of evidence by the plaintiff, who presented a DNA test that would show with a 91% probability that He was the brother of the Belgian Ingrid Sartiau, who also claimed to be the daughter of Juan Carlos I. But the same geneticist who carried out the test on both later affirmed that they were not brothers and that he had told her so at the end of 2012, although the plaintiff had not wanted to make it public.

Marta Gayá (decorator). Divorced, she came from a wealthy Mallorcan family of Catalan and Filipino descent. The magazine Tribuna was the first medium to echo, in 1990, the "intimate friendship" that existed between them. For some media, this has been the great and true love of Juan Carlos. Their closest environment considered them a stable couple, "a kind of second marriage".

Bárbara Rey (vedette). She was the then Prime Minister, Adolfo Suárez, who introduced her to him in 1976 at a campaign event for his party, Unión de Centro Democrático. Bárbara Rey (pseudonym of María García García) was then an "actress of shocking beauty, very sexy, with long legs, a sensual voice, a torn sympathy, and a nerve full of mischief" Both used to meet in an apartment located in an urbanization of Boadilla del Monte, always under the "control" and "protection" of the State security services, the Cesid (later called CNI). In 1994 the king tries to break the relationship, and then she decides to blackmail him with videos of her intimate encounters that she had recorded with the help of a relative. The extortion continued until May 1996, when President José María Aznar ordered the immediate stoppage of payments. Bárbara Rey offered a definitive agreement: collect a "generous settlement" at once and forget about the matter forever. The Government feared, more than the sexual scandal, the revelation of state secrets that the king would have shared with her in privacy, such as her role in 23-F. One of the recordings recorded a telephone call in which the monarch would have warned him: "Hey, on Monday the 23rd, try not to leave the house! Because something could happen...". Fearing that the scandal would force the At the end of the legislature and his recently released absolute majority, Aznar agreed to the actress's claims. According to former Cesid senior officials, payments were made through an account at the Kredietbank of Luxembourg and other opaque accounts: "In Switzerland we had opened secret accounts in the name of false identities and intermediary companies. Both the money and the jewels and gifts were paid for the most part from the Presidency of the Government itself, charged to the reserved funds". Subsequent information reveals that the State "only" provided the infrastructure (the secret services) to channel the money, which actually came from "external donors", from businessmen friends of Juan Carlos. For her part, to collect the successive deliveries, Bárbara sent a journalist from the pink press Santi Arriazu, who kept 20% as commission.

In 1997, the actress reported to the police the theft from her home of three magnetic tapes, five video tapes and twenty slides containing scenes and conversations allegedly compromising "an important person". She stated that the event occurred after being contacted by people who wanted to "obtain information from such documents", as well as involve her in a business of dubious legality. She also denounced having received death threats against her and her two children.

Sol Bacharach (Professor of Commercial Law and businesswoman). A woman with an extensive resume and long professional life, she sometimes visited the Palacio de la Zarzuela on behalf of the international association United World College, which she had founded, but no one suspected the relationship until Corinna's recordings were released in 2015. The relationship lasted three years.

Corinna Larsen (businesswoman). Juan Carlos I met Corinna zu Sayn-Wittgenstein on a hunt in February 2004, in which she attended as managing director and public relations of the organizing company. When dinner was being prepared, the monarch asked her: "Sit next to me, that's a street slut who's coming to hunt me down." Juan Carlos falls in love with her. A month and a half later, Manuel Prado y Colón de Carvajal, administrator of Zarzuela, was imprisoned for economic crimes and Corinna began to assume some of his duties. «Immediately [Juan Carlos] began to entrust things to her and, in a short time, she had become his consultant, personal assistant, high-level public relations, mediator… Like Prado, Corinna zu Sayn-Wittgenstein enjoyed a diplomatic passport». The king was accompanied by his mistress in his meetings with Spanish high society and even formed part of his entourage on state trips. In 2004, she helped Iñaki Urdangarín at the Valencia Summit, sponsored by the Nóos Institute, and organized Prince Felipe's honeymoon with Letizia Ortiz through various countries around the world. Likewise, she participated in commercial operations for large Spanish companies, such as the OHL of the king's great friends, Juan Miguel Villar Mir, and Prince Felipe, Javier López Madrid. He charged commissions of around 3 percent. In 2010, Juan Carlos was found to have a lung nodule and the monarch thought he was going to die of cancer. Although love had faded, the German woman continued by his side The tumor turned out to be benign. Then the sentimental and business relationship picked up. Queen Sofía was already residing in London when Corinna settled in La Angorrilla, a country house within the La Zarzuela complex. The couple also spent long periods of time in a luxury duplex that they had acquired in Switzerland. In 2012 the accident happened from Botswana. The couple ended their relationship in November 2014.

Health problems

Juan Carlos I has suffered throughout his life various health problems and physical mishaps that have forced him to enter the operating room on numerous occasions:

• In 1954 it had to be operated on appendicitis.
• On 21 June 1981 it had to be operated as a result of a blow against a glass door when it was ready to bathe in the pool of the Palace of La Zarzuela, which produced a cut in the radial nerve.
• On 3 January 1983 he suffered a fissure in the pelvis while skiing in Gstaad, Switzerland, for which he had to be three months off.
• On July 19, 1985 he had to be intervened again to remove a fibrosis from that ski accident.
• On December 28, 1991, he had a new ski accident in Baqueira Beret when he crashed with another skier, after which he had to be operated on the knee, which led him to be four months off.
• On May 8, 2010, a benign lung tumor was removed.
• On April 14, 2012 he had to be operated with an emergency hip break during an elephant hunt he had been invited to in Botswana.
• On November 23, 2012 he was intervened to implant a prosthesis in the left hip joint.
• On March 3, 2013, it was operated from discopathies and lumbar canal stenosis.
• On September 24, 2013 he was operated from his left hip.
• On 21 November 2013 it was operated again from the left hip to replace the provisional prosthesis implanted in the previous intervention by a definitive one.
• On August 25, 2019 he had to undergo open-heart surgery to practice three bypass.

Titles, honors and appointments

Shield of personal weapons of King Juan Carlos I.

In fiction

Over the years, the figure of Juan Carlos I has become a character in movies, series and TV movies in Spain, including the following:

• 20-N: The last days of Franco (2008), played by Fernando Cayo.
• 23-F: The most difficult day of the king (2009), played by Lluís Homar.
• Adolfo Suárez, President (2010), played by Fernando Cayo.
• Alfonso, the goddamn prince (2010), played by Fernando Gil.
• Philip and Letizia (2010), played by Juanjo Puigcorbé.
• Tarancón, the fifth commandment (2010), played by Álex Tormo.
• 23-F: the film (2011), played by Fernando Cayo.
• Sofia (2011), played by Jorge Suquet.
• Mario Conde. The days of glory (2013), played by Angel Hidalgo.
• The King (2013), played by Fernando Gil.
• From law to law (2017), played by Fernando Andina.
• Christ and King (2023), played by Cristóbal Suárez.

Ancestors

Predecessor: John of Bourbon and Battenberg	Prince of Asturias 1941-1975	Successor: Philip of Bourbon and Greece
Predecessor: -	Prince of Spain 1969-1975	Successor: -
Predecessor: Francisco Dictator, with the title of "Caudillo de España"	King of Spain 1975-2014	Successor: Felipe VI