When French justice accused the newborn Luis Fernando of Orléans and Bourbon of drug trafficking, Alfonso XIII quickly pulled strings so that the scandal involving his cousin would go as unnoticed as possible. The year was 1924, Primo de Rivera’s dictatorship had just begun, and the king managed to silence the issue by putting pressure on the press and making his inconvenient relative disappear. Luis Fernando, stripped of his titles and condemned to exile, died in Paris in 1945, immersed in poverty and forgotten by the Spanish people. Eighty years after the infant’s death, the Crown no longer finds it so easy to sweep its disputes under the palace carpets.
Juan Carlos I, grandson of Alfonso XIII, has just published his memoirs in France with the intention, in his words, of reconciling himself with his past, his family and Spain. But Reconciliationwhich will arrive in Spanish bookshops in December, has done nothing but reopen old wounds. Televisions, newspapers and digital newspapers, magazines and streamers social networks specializing in monarchy have been openly analyzing the thorniest issues of the book for days: the almost paternal-filial bond that the monarch had with Franco and his collusion with the dictatorship; his role in 23-F; his fortune and opaque finances; his extramarital affairs; and also his personal differences with Philip VI and Queen Letizia.
THE silence enjoyed by King Juan Carlos is a thing of the past. That pact of silence began to break down in the summer of 1992, when President 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 there” – caused the first crack in the great taboo of the Transition: the end of the silence on the private life of the head of state.
In the midst of all this commotion, EL PAÍS published that the King was in Switzerland to undergo “a routine check-up”. Juan Carlos I had to return to Madrid to meet the president, but failed to silence rumors about the true nature of his absence. In an unprecedented tone, the press of the time spoke bluntly of his friendship with a well-known lady of Majorcan society and pointed to this relationship as the reason for his clandestine trips abroad. Twenty years later, in 2012, another secret trip, to Botswana, and another dealwith Corinna Larsen, he finished breaking the great taboo that the untouchable figure of the monarch had represented for the press.
“In the case of Spain there has been a tacit pact of silence for many years. It was the directors of the main media who told their editors: ‘Be careful what you write about the royal family. We don’t want any problems.’ It was an institution that had just recovered and we had to be careful,” acknowledges Carmen Enríquez, TVE journalist for 37 years and royal correspondent for the public broadcaster from 1990 to 2007.
According to Enríquez, the media and social networks have contributed a lot to the current liberalization or opening. “Before there was much more opacity, much less things were revealed. The royal family was over-protected. Now the media and all the institutions are very attentive to what is said on the networks and this pushes them to go a little further in their reporting. It is as if the light had entered, sometimes against the interests and image of the royal family”, he adds.
José Antonio Zarzalejos, director of the monarchist newspaper ABC from 1999 to 2004 and from 2005 to 2008, in agreement with Enríquez. “With new technologies, traditional media have lost the exclusivity of intermediation. This is a paradigm shift in information, communication and transparency in all societies. And this very seriously affects monarchies, a counter-majoritarian and necessarily opaque institution”, underlines the journalist. “The monarchy must always maintain a liturgical distance to preserve its magic and this clashes with the current needs for information and transparency. This clash confirms the great difficulty that monarchies, non-elective institutions, have in explaining themselves in democratic contexts”.
Allegations of abuse
The Spanish Crown is not the only one to be shocked by a book. The recent publication of Virginia Giuffre’s posthumous memoirs in the United Kingdom has landed King Charles III in trouble. Giuffré’s revelations in Nobody’s girl (Nobody’s Girl), a book in which he accuses Prince Andrew of sexual abuse and implicates him in the trafficking network of the American tycoon Jeffrey Epstein, forced the British monarch to overthrow his brother, withdrawing his titles and honors, separating him from the royal family and expelling him from the dominions of Windsor.
“There is a Darwinian law in royal houses to support themselves: whoever puts the institution at risk is removed. This is the case of the brother of Charles III. This is the case of Queen Juliana of the Netherlands when her husband, Prince Bernard, was accused of collecting commissions. This is the case of King Edward VIII. This is very old. Ferdinand VII did not let his father, Charles IV, die in Spain. Alfonso XIII did not let his grandmother, Isabella II, die in Spain,” he explains. Brambles. “But this law, previously silent, is now made more difficult by transparency. This change in standards forces us to limit the number of members of royal families. They can no longer be very large. In this Philip VI was very perspicacious, limiting the royal family to six members.”
King Charles’ decision attempts to contain the damage caused by his brother, but Andrés 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 in Sandringham, the private property of the British monarch, as some media points out? Now who will maintain it? As published CaretakerA few days ago, the former Duke of York could receive an annual allowance intended to prevent him from ending up like his nephew, Prince Henry, by telling the press about his new life as a commoner. The progressive newspaper points out that this annuity will be paid from Charles III’s private funds and that it will be several times higher than the annual pension of 20,000 pounds (about 22,000 euros) that Mountbatten receives from the Navy.
In 1990, Baldwin I of Belgium abdicated for 36 hours to avoid having to sign his country’s abortion law. The monarch, a fervent Catholic, supported conscientious objection. Today the Belgians are not so accommodating to the whims of their kings. In October 2020, that country’s justice recognized Delphine Boël, 52, legitimate daughter of Albert II. From one day to the next, the current king, Philip, son of Albert and nephew of Baldwin, had to open the doors of the palace to a new sister and give 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 for not having received the same treatment as her brothers, having been excluded from official royal family events.
Now Felipe de los Belgas must welcome a new and unexpected member to the palace. Her brother, Prince Laurent, 62, has just admitted he has a secret son. The national press announced that the king will grant the title of prince to his nephew, Clément Vandenkerckhove, 25 years old. Vandenkerckhove may claim the treatment of highness, but he will not be part of the Royal House, he will not be included in the line of succession to the throne, nor will he receive an official position.
The media are no longer silent about the excesses of their kings and princes and public opinion is increasingly harsh towards them. The luxurious private holidays of William and Maxima of the Netherlands and their daughters in Mozambique or Greece are a recurring topic of debate in that country. This summer, the Dutch press criticized the eight long weeks of rest the monarchs spent outside the Netherlands. Among their favorite destinations is the island of Spetses, an exclusive enclave in the Aegean Sea where they have a house and a yacht.
The Orange’s secret travels are often a problem. Princess Amalia, the future queen, has been secretly living in Madrid in 2023, fleeing threats from the Mocro Maffia. The most powerful and feared organized crime gang in Europe offered a sum of one million dollars for the heiress’ head, although the details of the case only emerged when the princess was already out of danger.
Even the seemingly idyllic Scandinavian monarchies are not immune to scandals and public scrutiny. Haakon and Mette-Marit of Norway, the crown princes, 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 thirty charges for various crimes, including three alleged rapes, abuse and assault, threats and failure to comply with restraining orders.
Mette-Marit’s son never had an official role in the Norwegian Crown, but grew up in the palace with Ingrid Alexandra and Sverre Magnus, the children the crown princess had with Haakon of Norway, with 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 family did not comment White stripes, black sheep but the book’s revelations and the constant drip of information about the Marius Borg case have turned the tables on Princess Ingrid, the heir’s heir. This week, the 21-year-old gave an interview on public television NRK in which spoke on the topic. The princess acknowledged that these were “very serious facts” AND? It’s hard for his family and “for all those affected by the case.” “Justice will have the last word,” concluded the granddaughter of kings Harald and Sonia. 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. Frederick X’s reign began in the winter of 2024 amid rumors of a marriage crisis with Australian lawyer Mary Donaldson. After the publication of some photographs of the then prince with the socialiteThe Mexican Genoveva Casanova in the Spanish magazine ReadingsQueen Margaret, the longest-reigning living monarch, abdicated in favor of her son on New Year’s Eve.
The succession, unexpected and explicit, managed to silence the speculations, but the trial that Casanova initiated against the Spanish weekly has revived the controversy. The Mexican, former Countess of Salvatierra and a regular on the pages of the glossy paper, claims that the images violated her rights to honor and privacy. The gossip press is following the trial closely, awaiting new details on this matter.
Crisis toilets are already common in royal families, but European royals are finding it increasingly difficult to hide their “junk” under the plush palace carpets.
