The king emeritus abandoned his self-imposed exile in Abu Dhabi to enjoy just eight hours on Saturday with the royal family in Madrid, at a private lunch at the El Pardo Palace, because he does not want to lose the relationship with his nieces and above all with the heir to the throne at an age that he considers particularly critical, as he communicated after arriving in Barajas to the interlocutors he met. Juan Carlos I also said he was worried about how the Spaniards understood the content of his memoirs, already published in France, and angry with his son, King Felipe VI, because he did not accept being able to reside for at least three months in Spain without first regularizing his fiscal and economic situation.
Juan Carlos I was the first to arrive last Saturday at the family lunch in El Pardo, around 1pm, and one of those who had earlier (around five in the afternoon) left the palace where the dictator Francisco Franco lived for many years. Around 8pm he was back at Madrid-Barajas airport to return to Abu Dhabi, from where he left in the summer of 2020 to avoid several scandals related to his financial situation and not further damage the Crown and his son.
In those just eight or nine hours spent in Madrid he had the time, in addition to meeting the members of the Royal Family again after two years, to also meet some of the collaborators and advisors who remained faithful to him throughout this period. The first thing he said to these interlocutors is something he has been repeating for months in those fiduciary meetings and which is reflected in the memoirs that will go on sale in Spain on December 3rd. Juan Carlos I feels alone in Abu Dhabi, he does not receive many visitors, and he particularly misses the bond with his nieces and in particular with Princess Leonor and Infanta Sofía.
In Reconciliationthe memoirs ready to be published and collected in November 2024, Juan Carlos I quotes them troubled: “They are very elegant and affectionate, but it saddened me not to be able to establish a personal relationship with them, tell them stories, share meals in restaurants, travel, take them to see games, as I did with my other grandchildren.” To his friends, this Saturday, what he has given them is not to share why they don’t let his granddaughters travel to Abu Dhabi sometime so that he can gradually observe their growth like he does with his other grandsons.
Last Saturday he repeated that lament to several friends whom he would also like to see in Madrid and to whom he took the opportunity to comment that he did not particularly like Friday’s ceremony at the Royal Palace, where his son, King Felipe VI, simultaneously handed over the Golden Fleece to his wife, Queen Sofía, to the former socialist president Felipe González and to the still living spokesmen of the 1978 Constitution, Miquel Roca and Miguel Herrero y Rodriguez. de Miñón. Juan Carlos I told them that he understood that Doña Sofía should receive separate and individual treatment and that the others could receive this recognition at another time.
Regarding the events organized on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the restoration of the monarchy in Spain, the King Emeritus finds it “ridiculous”, and has made this known to his friends in Madrid, that he was excluded and that he had no other participation than that private lunch agreed in El Pardo. Between September and October of this year, on one of the trips he made to Sanxenxo (Pontevedra) to attend some regattas, he let his son in La Zarzuela know of his discomfort at his absence from these scheduled events. “It’s ridiculous that the baby doesn’t appear in a baptism,” he said.
In part, the publication of his memoirs has to do with what he defends as his historical legacy because of his role in the Transition and “because he felt it was more necessary than ever to provide his version of events.” People who have traveled to Abu Dhabi in recent years and who frequented him during his sporadic stays upon returning to Spain explain that the book saw the light so late because there were many negotiations with the publishers, in France and Spain, with pressure and discussions on the most appropriate or inappropriate date. They will now go on sale in Spain on December 3 to distract him from his son’s speech on Christmas Eve.
The King Emeritus reserved some laudatory passages in his memoirs for his wife, with whom he no longer has contact and who has not come to visit him in Abu Dhabi in recent years, and admitted in his talks last weekend in Madrid that he was positively satisfied with how those comments about Queen Sofia were received by citizens and the media. The negative allusions to what he says in that book about his son and, above all, about Queen Letizia, were expected.
Juan Carlos I reproaches Doña Letizia in his memoirs for not having contributed “to the cohesion of family relationships” and for not having responded to or accepted the offer he had made to her to resolve their differences by entering his office. “I did everything I could to overcome our differences, I told him I had my office door open, but he never came,” she says.
In his autobiography he dedicated some controversial and laudatory passages to Franco and his friends interpreted that he did it “out of debt of gratitude” because it was the dictator who facilitated the restoration of the monarchy.
Juan Carlos’ collaborators or advisors assure that on this occasion he was unable to resolve with his son one of the outstanding issues that worries him the most and which for now remains blocked. The king emeritus wants to return to Spain and maintains “the hope of reaching an agreement with Philip VI so that he can tolerate, at least, being able to reside in the country for approximately three months”. The same sources confirm that the monarch, advised by tax experts, responded that this desire will not be possible and even less that of settling permanently in Spain again if he has not first completely sorted out his economic and fiscal situation, because he now pays taxes in Abu Dhabi.
