Disgraced Juan Carlos wants to return from exile a hero. But Spain’s murky history still dogs him
The ex-king has been stranded in Abu Dhabi after a series of scandals. Now newly released files support his claim to have saved Spanish democracy
When Spain’s King Juan Carlos fell over and broke his hip while on an elephant hunt with a girlfriend in Botswana in 2012, he probably thought that Spaniards would accept this as a minor gaffe after a lifetime of public service. The monarch had, after all, weathered numerous scandals, including a string of extramarital affairs and investigations into his family’s financial affairs, during the previous 37 years of his reign. Money was hardly a problem in his life.
This time, however, Spaniards had had enough. It was the height of the eurozone crisis and there was outrage that Juan Carlos was on what was reported to be a free hunting trip while people endured the poverty, mass unemployment and terror of an economy in freefall. Within two years, the king had abdicated and was passing the crown to his son, Felipe VI.
This apparent act of humility looked, at least, to guarantee a quiet retirement for a man who, although handpicked by Francisco Franco to be the rightwing dictator’s successor, was later credited with restoring and then protecting Spanish democracy after a failed coup in 1981.
But the scandals kept accumulating. In June 2018, his son-in-law Iñaki Urdangarín began a sentence of five years and 10 months at a jail in Ávila for embezzlement, fraud, prevarication, influence peddling and tax dodging. Two years later, in August 2020, Juan Carlos set off to self-imposed exile in Abu Dhabi, amid a scandal over a $100m payment into his secret Swiss bank accounts by Saudi Arabia’s royal family.
Newspapers published allegations that the money, which Juan Carlos called “a gift” from the Saudi king, was for helping negotiate a contract between Saudi and Spanish companies to build a $6.7bn high-speed railway line from Medina to Mecca but Swiss authorities abandoned an investigation into this for lack of evidence. The married king gave a chunk of money to the same ex-lover from the Botswana elephant hunt – the glamorous German businesswoman Corinna Larsen. She refused to give it back, claiming that this was a personal gift.
From his new Gulf hideaway, Juan Carlos admitted failing to declare millions of euros of income to the Spanish tax authorities. He eventually paid more than €5m in back taxes and fines, just in time for tax authorities to declare him clean. The former king could not, in any case, be prosecuted for anything he had done while on the throne since Spanish monarchs enjoy legal immunity.
With Abu Dhabi now a golden cage, the former monarch wants to come home, and is determined to restore his reputation. Late last year, he published a memoir, Reconciliation, that was widely panned by critics as self-congratulatory, unrevealing and self-justifying. But it remains among Spain’s 100 bestselling books three months later, suggesting that significant love remains for the now 88-year-old former monarch.
Last month, Juan Carlos, with the support of conservative politicians, began ramping up his campaign to return to Spain, convinced that he will be received as a hero – or so some Spanish media report.
The Sanchez government’s decision to declassify a tranche of previously hidden documents about a crucial episode from Juan Carlos’s reign may have prompted this delusion. The files shed light on the 1981 coup attempt that almost strangled Spain’s young democracy in the cradle.
The coup generated numerous conspiracy theories, including that Juan Carlos himself was in cahoots with the armed men who marched into parliament and took the 350 deputies hostage for 18 hours on 23 February 1981. After all, when civil guard officer Lt Col Antonio Tejero, wearing a shiny patent leather tricorn hat, led 200 soldiers and civil guards into parliament, he and others firmly believed that they had Juan Carlos’s backing. As the terrified deputies crouched on the floor, Tejero’s men peppered the ceiling with gunshots. Their aim was to turn the clock back to the Franco era by imposing a military-led government.
The plotters believed democracy was bringing ruin to Spain. Basque separatism was on the rise, leftist terrorists were in the streets and communists in parliament.
Indeed, the communist leader, Santiago Carrillo, was led off at gunpoint to a separate room in parliament with other opposition leaders, including the future socialist prime minister Felipe González. “Many of us wondered whether they would ever be seen again,” the former socialist deputy Juan de Dios Heredia recalled earlier this month.
As we now know from the released files, some of the rebels – like those who assaulted state broadcaster RTVE – had shoot-to-kill orders if opposed. Miraculously, no one died. Tejero, the ringleader, remained unrepentant to the end, dying at 93, on the day the coup papers were released.
The 167 released files are a huge disappointment. They vindicate Juan Carlos, but they represent only part of what was once a far bulkier archive of material. Generations of politicians and spies have stripped Spanish history allowing crucial first-hand sources to be either destroyed or hidden.
Five years ago, El País published a tranche of court documents that have not been made available in this dump. The veteran investigative journalist Antonio Rubio published military documents 20 years ago about the coup in the eastern city of Valencia, where tanks rumbled down the streets. Those are also missing.
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“What the government needs to do now is launch an investigation into who took away documents and who destroyed them,” Rubio told me, adding that this includes tapes of phone conversations through the parliamentary switchboard before and during the coup.
Rubio has copies of documents that are not in the official drop. One features a double agent, Catalina Abad, who worked for both the Soviet Union and Spain’s military intelligence. In this document, she passes on a report that the prime minister, Adolfo Suárez – who had by now fallen out with Juan Carlos – was threatened by two generals. According to Abad, alias Katia, the monarch left Suárez alone with the two officers, who placed their pistols on the table in front of him as a threat. Days later, the premier resigned. The coup attempt took place as deputies were preparing to vote in his successor, Leopoldo Calvo-Sotelo.
The Abad evidence is hearsay – based on a report by a well-connected lawyer – and may be wrong. The king may not have heard about the alleged threats, and has not commented on this document. But where has the file gone? And where are the rest? A good guess is that much of this material was destroyed long ago by the country’s intelligence agencies or their political masters.
The history vandals did all this under the protection of one of Europe’s severest state secrecy acts, which was written by Franco in 1968 and provides no timescale for declassification of state documents. As a result, those responsible for hiding or destroying documents may never be identified and will never have to explain.
Attempts to rewrite that law by the current parliament have been stymied. Rightwing parties, including Catalan nationalists, are blocking it, according to El País, raising questions about whether they have something to hide. Historians want to know, for example, about the coup’s civilian backers and its funding.
The coup ended after Juan Carlos personally ordered military units not to follow the insurrectionists and, dressed in his commander-in-chief’s uniform, made a historic TV address to the nation. This consolidated his reputation as the saviour of democracy.
Javier Cercas, whose book Anatomy of a Moment is the best narrative account of the coup, believes the new documents settle the debate about the former king’s role. “Juan Carlos did not mount the coup. He stopped it,” he wrote in El País .
For his part, Juan Carlos has let it be known that, to use a bullfighting metaphor, he intends to re-enter through the “puerta grande” (the main bullring gate through which triumphant matadors are carried on the shoulders of fans), by returning to live in the royal palace at La Zarzuela, Madrid.
In fact, the main stain on Juan Carlos’s legacy is his lack of humility. His son’s officials say that if the former king wishes to return, he must expect to pay taxes like everyone else – including on gifts. He no longer receives a royal stipend, so his income remains a mystery.
It is probable that he really did save democracy, and should be honoured for this, and for leading Spain out of dictatorship. But an honest account requires access to all files pertaining to his reign, and information on where his funds have come from. For that, Spain urgently needs a new official secrets act.
