Exiled ex-Spanish king expected to flag plans as inquiries shelved

Spaniards are expecting their self-exiled former king Juan Carlos to reveal plans about his future in the coming days after a series of investigations into his financial affairs were shelved.

The supreme court closed three separate probes into the 84-year-old former monarch last week, encouraging speculation that he might soon return from Abu Dhabi, where he took refuge in August 2020 as scandal engulfed him at home.

His flight was triggered by controversy surrounding a €65 million payment Juan Carlos received in 2008 from the Saudi royal family, leading to investigations by both Swiss and Spanish prosecutors. With the Swiss probe closed in December, Spanish prosecutors followed suit last week, having found no evidence that the sum was a bribe linked to the awarding of a fast-train construction contract.

Although the money was kept in a Swiss bank account, prosecutors found that tax fraud charges would not stand up because Juan Carlos, who abdicated in 2014, still had regal immunity at the time.

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Another probe, into offshore funds linked to him in Jersey, found that he had not benefited from the accounts in recent years. Meanwhile, the investigation into more than €500,000 he was believed to have received from Mexican tycoon Allen Sanginés-Krause was closed because Juan Carlos had paid €5 million to the tax authority in order to clear his arrears.

"For Spaniards this is a false closure [of the cases], confirming the worst suspicions we may have had about the kind of lifestyle Juan Carlos I led while he was on the Spanish throne," said El Periódico de España newspaper.

However, the former monarch’s lawyer, Javier Sánchez-Junco, put a more positive spin on the development, announcing that the prosecutor’s decision proved that “in none of the cases were there circumstances that make apparent the existence of any chargeable illegality”.

He said that this week Juan Carlos will make "the appropriate analysis" of his situation, raising expectations that he could announce plans about his future, including a possible return to Spain.

In recent months the Spanish media has been full of possible formulas for this eventuality, ranging from a return to the Zarzuela royal palace in Madrid to an arrangement whereby he travels back and forth between Spain and Portugal. But any such return would be carefully thought through and would be sanctioned by his son, King Felipe.

“They are trying to figure out which is more damaging for the dignity of the Spanish state – to have this man abroad or in Spain,” says Ana Romero, author of several books about Spain’s modern history and the monarchy.

She points out that the phrase once synonymous with Juan Carlos, “the king of all Spaniards”, no longer applies.

‘Divisive figure’

“Now the biggest problem is that he has become a divisive figure and that is lethal for a monarchy,” she says.

Supporters of Juan Carlos, who tend to be older and on the right of the political spectrum, recall the crucial role he played in leading the country towards parliamentary democracy on taking the throne in 1975, following the death of the dictator Francisco Franco.

But critics point to the litany of scandals which have come to light over the last decade. They include the news in 2012, in the depths of the euro-zone crisis, that he had been on an elephant hunting holiday in Botswana with a woman identified as his lover, Corinna Larsen.

She remains a problematic figure for the royal family. Larsen, who ended up in possession of the now-infamous €65 million, has denounced what she called a campaign of harassment and threats against her by Spanish intelligence services and her former lover. She has brought a civil lawsuit against Juan Carlos in London, where a court is currently deciding whether he should be stripped of his immunity and possibly go on trial.

Parties on the left have been particularly outspoken about Juan Carlos’s legal tribulations. The labour minister, Yolanda Díaz, who represents Unidas Podemos, the junior partner in the coalition government, said the shelving of the cases against him gave “the idea that we are not all equal before the law”.

Chilled

Prime minister Pedro Sánchez has been equivocal when asked about the former king and his possible return and on a recent institutional trip to Abu Dhabi it was made clear that the Socialist leader would not be meeting with him. Juan Carlos’s relationship with King Felipe is also reported to have chilled since his flight from Spain.

The question now is whether it is in the interests of the monarchy, the government, and Spain in general, to welcome the disgraced former head of state back again.