When French authorities accused Prince Luis Fernando de Orleans y Borbón of drug trafficking, the Spaniard Alfonso XIII quickly made sure that the scandal involving his cousin went as unnoticed as possible. The year was 1924, the dictatorship of Miguel Primo de Rivera had just begun and the Spanish king managed to silence the issue by pressuring the media and making his annoying relative disappear. Stripped of his titles and condemned to exile, Luis Fernando died in Paris in 1945, impoverished and forgotten by the Spanish people. Eighty years after the prince’s death, the Crown no longer finds it so easy to sweep its disputes under the carpet.
Juan Carlos I, grandson of Alfonso XIII, has just published his memoirs in France with the intention, in his own words, of reconciling himself with his past, his family and Spain. But Reconciliationwhich will arrive in Spanish bookstores in December, has only reopened old wounds. Televisions, newspapers, online publications, magazines and social media specializing in the monarchy spent days shamelessly analyzing the most delicate issues of the book: the almost father-son bond that the monarch had with Francisco Franco and his complicity with the dictatorship; his role in the coup attempt of February 23, 1981; his fortune and opaque finances; his extramarital affairs; and also his personal differences with Philip VI and Queen Letizia.
The silence that Juan Carlos enjoys belongs to the past. That pact of silence began to crack in the summer of 1992, when then-Spanish Prime Minister Felipe González was forced to reveal that he could not appoint a minister because the king was not in Spain. A simple phrase – “the King is not here” – caused the first rift in the great taboo of the Spanish transition to democracy: the end of the silence on the private life of the head of state.
Amid all this commotion, EL PAÍS reported that the king was in Switzerland to undergo “a routine check-up”. Juan Carlos I had to return to Madrid to meet González, but failed to quell rumors about the true nature of his absence. In an unprecedented move, the press of the time spoke frankly about his friendship with a well-known Majorcan society lady and pointed to this relationship as the reason for his secret trips abroad. Twenty years later, in 2012, another unannounced trip, this time to Botswana, and another relationship, with Corinna Larsen, finally broke the great taboo that had long made the monarch an untouchable figure for the Spanish press.
“In the case of Spain, for many years there was a tacit pact of silence. It was the editors of the main media who told their journalists: ‘Be careful what you write about the royal family. We don’t want any problems.’ It was a newly restored institution and we had to be careful,” acknowledges Carmen Enríquez, journalist for 37 years for the Spanish public broadcaster TVE and royal correspondent from 1990 to 2007.
According to Enríquez, the media and social networks have played an important role in the current wave of openness. “Before there was much more opacity, much fewer things came to light. The royal family was overprotected. Now the media and all the institutions are very careful about what is said on social networks, and this pushes them to go a little further in reporting. It’s as if the light has entered, sometimes against the interests and image of the royal family,” he says.
José Antonio Zarzalejos, director of the monarchist newspaper ABC from 1999 to 2004 and from 2005 to 2008, agrees with Enríquez. “With new technologies, traditional media have lost their exclusive role as intermediaries. This is a paradigm shift in information, communication and transparency in all societies. And this seriously affects monarchies, a counter-majoritarian and, by necessity, opaque institution”, underlines the journalist. “The monarchy must always maintain a liturgical distance to preserve its mystique, and this clashes with current demands for information and transparency. This clash highlights the considerable difficulty that monarchies, as unelected institutions, have in being explained within democratic contexts.”
Allegations of abuse
The Spanish monarchy is not the only one to have been shaken by a book. The recent publication of Virginia Giuffre’s posthumous memoirs in the United Kingdom has put King Charles III in a difficult position. Giuffré’s revelations in Nobody’s girlin which he accuses Prince Andrew of sexual abuse and involves him in the trafficking ring of the American tycoon Jeffrey Epstein, after having forced the British monarch to disown his brother, stripping him of his titles and honours, distancing him from the royal family and banishing him from the Windsor estate.
“There is a Darwinian law at play for the survival of royal houses: those who threaten the institution are removed. This was the case with the brother of Charles III. It was the case of Queen Juliana of the Netherlands when her husband, Prince Bernard, was accused of accepting bribes. It was the case of King Edward VIII. This is very old. Ferdinand VII did not allow his father, Charles IV, to die in Spain. Alfonso XIII did not allow his grandmother, Isabella II, died in Spain”, explains Zarzalejos. “But this once unspoken law is now more difficult to enforce due to increased transparency. This change in standards imposes a limitation on the number of members of royal families. They can no longer be very large. Philip VI was very astute in this regard, limiting the royal family to six members.”
King Charles’ decision attempted to contain the damage caused by his brother, but Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor’s virtual exile has only raised new questions. Why is the former prince still in line to the throne? Will he go to live at Sandringham, the private estate of the British monarch, as some media suggest? Who will support him now? According to a recent article on CaretakerThe former Duke of York could receive an annual allowance designed to prevent him from ending up like his nephew Prince Harry by telling the press about his new life as a commoner. The progressive newspaper indicates that this lifetime income will be paid from Charles III’s private funds and will be many times higher than the £20,000 ($26,356) annual pension Mountbatten receives from the Royal Navy.
In 1990, Baldwin I of Belgium abdicated for 36 hours to avoid signing his country’s abortion law. The monarch, a devout Catholic, cited conscientious objection. Today the Belgians are not so forgiving of the whims of their kings. In October 2020, Belgian courts recognized Delphine Boël, 52, as the legitimate daughter of Albert II. Overnight, the current King Philip, son of Albert and nephew of Baldwin, had to open the palace doors to a new sister and grant her the title of princess. Despite being a full member of the Royal House, in 2023 Boël filed a complaint with the country’s prime minister that she had not received the same treatment as her siblings, as she had been excluded from official royal family events.
Now, King Philippe of Belgium must welcome another new and unexpected member to the palace. Her brother, Prince Laurent, 62, has just admitted he has a secret son. The Belgian press has reported that the king will grant the title of prince to his nephew, Clément Vandenkerckhove, 25. Vandenkerckhove will also be able to bear the title of Highness, but he will not be a member of the Royal House, he will not be included in the line of succession to the throne and he will not receive an official allowance.
The media are no longer silent about the excesses of their kings and princes and public opinion is increasingly critical of them. The luxurious private holidays of Willem-Alexander and Máxima of the Netherlands and their daughters in Mozambique and Greece are a recurring topic of debate in the country. This summer, the Dutch press criticized the monarchs’ eight-week hiatus outside the Netherlands. Among their favorite destinations is the island of Spetses, an exclusive enclave in the Aegean Sea where they own a house and a yacht.
The secret travels of the House of Orange are often problematic. Princess Amalia, the future queen, has been secretly living in Madrid in 2023, fleeing threats from the Mocro Maffia. This powerful and feared organized crime group in Europe offered a multimillion-dollar reward to the heir to the throne, although details of the case only emerged when the princess was out of danger.
Even the seemingly idyllic Scandinavian monarchies are not immune to scandals and public scrutiny. Crown Prince Haakon and Crown Princess Mette-Marit of Norway have been in the media spotlight for months due to the criminal behavior of Marius Borg, the son the princess had before marrying the future king. Borg, 28, faces around 30 charges for various crimes, including three alleged cases of rape, abuse and assault, threats and violating restraining orders.
Mette-Marit’s son never held an official role in the Norwegian royal family, but he grew up in the palace together with Ingrid Alexandra and Sverre Magnus, the children the crown princess had by Haakon of Norway, with all the privileges that this entailed. Torgeir Krokfjord and Oistein Monsen, journalists from Dagbladetthe most read newspaper in the country, has just published a book entitled White stripes, black sheep. It alleges that Mette-Marit may have attempted to hinder the police investigation to protect her son.
The Norwegian Royal House did not comment White stripes, black sheepbut the book’s revelations and the continuous flow of information about the Marius Borg case have influenced Princess Ingrid, the heir to the throne. The 21-year-old recently gave an interview to public broadcaster NRK in which she addressed the issue. The princess acknowledged that these are “very serious matters” and that they are proving difficult for her family and “for everyone affected by the case”. “Justice will have the last word,” concluded the granddaughter of King Harald and Queen Sonja. The trial against his brother is expected to begin in January 2026.
Denmark, the land of Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tales, deserves a separate chapter. Frederik X’s reign began in the winter of 2024 amid rumors of a marital crisis with his wife Mary Donaldson from Australia. After photographs of the then prince with the Mexican socialite Genoveva Casanova were published in the Spanish magazine ReadingsQueen Margrethe, the longest-reigning living monarch, abdicated in favor of her son on New Year’s Eve.
The unexpected and rapid succession managed to quell speculation, but the lawsuit brought by Casanova against the Spanish weekly has reignited the controversy. The Mexican, former Countess of Salvatierra and a regular presence in the gossip pages, claims that the images violated her rights to honor and privacy. The tabloids are following the story carefully, awaiting further details on the matter.
Crisis cabinets are already commonplace in royal families, but European monarchies are finding it increasingly difficult to hide dirt under the plush palace carpets.
Sign up to our weekly newsletter to get more English-language news coverage from EL PAÍS USA Edition
