Can Spain forgive Juan Carlos? He’s gone from liberator to lothario

If you ever struggle to adapt to the modern world, spare a thought for Juan Carlos, the disgraced Emeritus King of Spain. On a rare return to Spain from the United Arab Emirates — where he currently resides in semi-exile — for a regatta in the spring of 2022, a journalist asked if he owed explanation to his former subjects. Juan Carlos responded, with obvious irritation, “Explanations for what?”

The short answer is abusing his royal position to fraudulently accrue a personal fortune and receive sexual favours. If rumours that he is writing his memoirs to tell his side of the story, and set the record straight of his contested legacy are true, the principal obstacle will be that he remains clueless about what he has done wrong. In reality, Juan Carlos’s conduct has not changed much over the last half a century, but what Spanish citizens expect of their leaders is now completely different. The Emeritus King isn’t accustomed to giving explanations, the Spanish media having historically treated him with kid gloves and the general population indulging rumours around his infidelities as part of his Don Juan charm.

But you’d be wrong to think it’s all sexual deviance and financial corruption. Juan Carlos is the chief architect of modern Spanish democracy, whose leadership was central to the country leaving behind its dictatorial past and becoming an active member of the European Union. While detractors claim that he had a blithe disregard for the rules and regulation of democratic law, apologists point to the fact that Spanish democracy might not even exist were it not for Juan Carlos. It remains to be seen which of the two opposing interpretations will overshadow the other in history books of the future.

On the day Juan Carlos was born, in Rome in 1938, the exiled Spanish royal family were optimistic about returning home. The Spanish Civil War, which began in 1936 with a military coup against the democratically elected government of the Second Republic (1931-1936), was turning in favour of the Right. General Francisco Franco proved remarkably successful at convincing a broad church of conservative factions that their interests would be best protected under his command. He always gave the impression that his success would secure the return of the royal family who left Spain with the proclamation of the Second Republic.

Following his victory, however, Franco had no desire to share power. Don Juan de Borbón, Juan Carlos’s father and heir to the Spanish throne, was extremely bitter about being hoodwinked by the upstart dictator. Presenting himself as a democratic alternative, he became increasingly vocal about his criticisms of the regime following Allied victory in the Second World War. The Spanish royal family had not bothered much about democracy during the Civil War, but Don Juan played on the fact that, with Hitler and Mussolini gone, Franco was a fascist relic.

As for El Caudillo himself, he was preoccupied by the question of succession. He was not averse to a hypothetical return to the royal lineage after his own death: as long as the core values of the regime remained intact. Don Juan’s vocal criticisms of the regime therefore ruled him out as a potential successor. Used — to borrow a phrase from Spanish historian Paul Preston — as a “shuttlecock” in power games between Don Juan and Franco, Juan Carlos was removed from his family as a child and sent to Spain where he was groomed as a prospective head of state. Educated in military academies, he realised the armed forces would never forgive his father for speaking ill of Spain abroad. Juan Carlos was not particularly academic or intellectual, but he developed arguably more important skills: quick-thinking, bonhomie and a chameleon-like ability to adapt to different scenarios.

Juan Carlos’s profile both in Spain and abroad were raised when he married Princess Sofia of Greece in 1962. Their honeymoon gave them the opportunity to meet foreign diplomats, and to present themselves as representing the best candidates to steer Spain towards a peaceful transition to democracy. Franco kept his own counsel, maintaining Juan Carlos close without making his succession plans explicit. Ironically, given his love of hunting and bullfighting, Juan Carlos’s first state appointment was as the president of the Spanish branch of the World Wildlife Fund in 1968. During the dictatorship, Spain never recognised Israel and maintained close socio-political ties with Arab countries. In his capacity as the Iraqi ambassador, Saddam Hussein received the Grand Cross of Isabel the Catholic Queen in recognition of his services to Spain from an ailing Franco, and a young Juan Carlos, in 1974. Juan Carlos was at least as interested in the economic and strategic importance of states as potential allies to Spain as he was in their democratic credentials, or lack thereof.

Keen not to burn any bridges, and aware of the need for dialogue if Spain wasn’t to be plunged into chaos, Juan Carlos was assiduous in meeting with Spanish politicians and opinion-makers from across the ideological spectrum in the years leading up to Franco’s death. On becoming head of state, he never tired of saying that he sought to be “King of all Spaniards” in televised and parliamentary addresses. This formulation, crucial in avoiding a return to the bitter bloodshed of the Civil War, conveniently ignored the fact that, for all his royal credentials, his institutional legitimacy derived from being a dictator’s chosen heir (and, to this day, Juan Carlos and Sofia will not allow anyone to badmouth Franco in their presence). Sofia, who speaks fondly of Franco in interviews, credits his daughter with not sabotaging the succession.

On the one hand, more influence was concentrated in the King’s hands than in any of his royal counterparts in Europe. To all intents and purposes, the remit of his role had been designed by a dictator. Conversely, he was the monarch with a most precarious position. The Spanish royal family were not as integrated into society as, say, the House of Windsor in the UK. Juan Carlos walked a tightrope to mediate between Francoists with scant democratic or international credibility, who nevertheless held institutional power, and an opposition whose principal negotiating card was to imbue the transition with legitimacy. The King’s political survival being tied to non-radical democratisation ensured his role is better assessed in tactical, not ethical terms. Nothing short of an expert tactician would have delivered, given the constant threat of potential saboteurs to Spain’s nascent democracy.

The Basque terrorist organisation ETA had assassinated Admiral Luis Carrero Blanco, Franco’s Prime Minister and right-hand man, in 1973. His successor, Carlos Arias Navarro, shed tears on live television when announcing Franco’s death. Committed to keeping Francoism alive, Arias Navarro was an obstacle to democratisation. In July 1976, Juan Carlos requested Arias Navarro’s resignation. He was replaced by Adolfo Suárez, an ideal ally to secure democratic evolution not revolution. Aged 43, his relative youth signalled a changing of the guard. But the fact he had been a politician and director of the state broadcaster under Franco reassured the more conservative sections of Spanish society.

When it came to the first general elections since before the Civil War in 1977, the King showed a complete lack of impartiality. Leaving nothing to chance, he wrote to the Shah of Iran and Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia to request funds to support Suárez’s election campaign, playing up the then anti-monarchist Socialist Party’s Marxist credentials at a time when communism was a very clear and present danger to the status quo in the Middle East.

Suárez won comfortably in 1977, but his popularity soon waned. With a challenging economic situation, and violence in the Basque Country, many Spaniards arrived at the conclusion that democracy wasn’t working. The 1979 general elections had the lowest turnout in recent Spanish history. Suárez narrowly defeated the Socialists who, under party leader Felipe González, then became less threatening by ditching references to Marxism from their party constitution. González and Juan Carlos had a shared interest in moving the Socialists towards the centre, as well as sidelining the Communist Party as a major force on the Spanish Left. Opinion polls consistently stressed that the general public’s principal priority was stability, and avoiding another Civil War, as opposed to the installation of democracy. Juan Carlos was seen first as a guarantor of stability and, only later, of democracy. Paradoxically, his reputedly indispensable role in both respects meant that he was free of checks and balances, a hallmark of any genuinely democratic state.

Juan Carlos was, in more ways than one, a hands-on monarch. Amadeo Martínez Inglés, a retired member of the military turned amateur historical sleuth, calculates that the Emeritus King has had 4,786 lovers, peaking with 2,154 between 1976 and 1984. Amid political turmoil, Juan Carlos’s playboy lifestyle rivalled that of Julio Iglesias (who would, some years later, gift him a lion cub, named “Hey” in honour of a signature song written about the romantic crooner’s ex-wife). The Spanish public was last year captivated by newly unearthed audios and photographs that seemingly confirmed long-standing rumours of Juan Carlos’s affair with Bárbara Rey, a vedette.

A mixture of gratitude and fear protected Juan Carlos from public scrutiny for many years. The transition, both at home and abroad, has traditionally been construed as Spain’s success story, the suture of the wounds of a bitterly fratricidal conflict, which cleared the way for the country’s belated modernisation and European integration. In many respects, 1981 is a more important date than 1975 as regards the democratisation process. For the six years following Franco’s death, a return to dictatorship was a genuine possibility, as the armed forces threatened to derail the new form of government which had left many Spaniards sceptical of the ability of democrats to run the country.

An attempted coup  took place on 23 February 1981. It involved members of the Guardia Civil entering parliament, effectively holding democracy hostage, while tanks rolls onto the streets of Madrid and Valencia. The chief agitators claimed to be acting under the orders of Juan Carlos — we will possibly never know if there is any truth to their claims. A televised address from the King to his subjects, pledging his commitment to democracy, was instrumental to the coup failing. Sceptics of Juan’s Carlos’s democratic credentials have always asked why it took the King so long to address the nation; the televised address only took place after the coup had descended into farce. This remained a minority view until fairly recently, with footage of the King’s address shown on Spanish state television ad nauseam over the coming years. Young Spaniards were indoctrinated with the belief that potentially lethal threat to Europeanisation had been averted through the fortitude and quick thinking of Juan Carlos, who steered the country towards a stable monarchical democracy, built on the bedrock of the free market and barring memories of the past from dictating the future. His private peccadillos were viewed as trifling in comparison with such exemplary public service.

The newly monarchical Socialist government, which won a landslide victory in the 1982 general elections under the party leadership of Felipe González, was the youngest in Europe, the first time the Generation of 1968 had been in charge of a major European government. When, in 2018, I interviewed González, the longest serving President of the democratic period, he emphasised the debt he and the general public had to the King for facilitating a transfer or powers to parliament. Many would beg to differ. A less picaresque figure than Juan Carlos would perhaps have been unable to midwife the transition, variously reassuring and playing off different factions of Spanish society. The issue is that he continued to act as a rogue and a rake when circumstances no longer demanded such qualities.

Juan Carlos’s instinct for measuring and manipulating the public mood deserted him with the crash of 2008. As millions of Spaniards lost their jobs, and struggled with mortgage repayments, the King considered divorcing Sofia to marry his long-term mistress, Corinna Larsen, with whom he was photographed on a hunting expedition in Botswana in 2012: all while citizens were still feeling the financial pain. Accounts differ as to what then ensued, but what we do know is that the Spanish secret services sought to persuade the German-Danish businesswoman to end the relationship, fearing that a scandal could rock the foundations of the state. She construed this as a threat.

When Larsen ended the relationship, Juan Carlos sought to recoup the millions he had lent and laundered through his mistress. She saw things differently and did not believe that her retaining funds were dependent on an ongoing romantic attachment. The Spanish press and the population were in no mood to mollycoddle the wayward Don Juan, who was now considered to be at the centre of a corrupt establishment that let the country and its citizens down. An increasing number of Spaniards began to question the “great men” accounts of the transition.

In 2014, Juan Carlos was pressured into abdicating in favour of his son, Felipe VI. Fearing a potential overturning of the legal immunity granted to living monarchs, the Emeritus King sought refuge with his old political chums in the Arab world. On his occasional returns to Spain, he has been kept at a distance by his family.

Juan Carlos’s downfall is the consequence of not only his personal and political failings, but also a social structure that exalted a man with all too human-foibles as almost God-like. The result is closer to farcical soap opera than classical tragedy — anagnorisis has been in short supply. It is difficult to see Juan Carlos as anything other than a foolish old man. What remains to be seen is whether he will be written into posterity as the hero or villain of modern Spanish democracy.