In it he has revealed the moment dictator General Franco summoned him to name him as his heir – a decision that would alter the course of Spanish history.
The 512 page book entitled Juan Carlos I d’Espagne: Réconciliation, was co-written with French author Laurence Debray and published in France yesterday.
In the book, the former king, now 87, speaks for the first time of his enduring sorrow over the death of his younger brother Alfonso, who he accidentally shot at the family’s home in Portugal in 1956.
The memoir also records his dismay when his son, King Felipe VI, informed him that he was renouncing his inheritance and withdrawing the allowance he had received as former head of state, after allegations of financial misconduct emerged in 2020.
Juan Carlos, who reigned from 1975 until his abdication in 2014, praises Franco — the man who groomed him for the throne and appointed him successor over his own father, Don Juan, who was the rightful heir to the Spanish throne.
“One day Franco summoned me to his office. He told me bluntly: ‘I am going to name you my successor as king. Do you accept?’ I was stunned; I asked whether I could have time to think, but he expected an answer quickly. I was caught between a rock and a hard place. Silence reigned; I could hear only my own breathing. I accepted — as a duty and an obligation. Did I have another choice?”
The memoir is divided into seven sections. Its opening chapters trace the former king’s childhood in exile and the tragedy that, he writes, ‘marked him forever’ — the death of Alfonso de Borbón while the two brothers were playing with a gun. ‘I didn’t like to talk about it, and this is the first time I do,’ he writes.
He continues: ‘We had no idea there was a bullet left in the chamber … He died in my father’s arms. There is a before and an after. It is still difficult for me to speak of it, and I think of it every day … I miss him; I wish I could have him by my side and talk with him. I lost a friend, a confidant. He left me with an immense emptiness. Without his death, my life would have been less dark, less unhappy.’
The memoir revisits another painful moment in March 2020, when Felipe told him he was giving up his inheritance and cancelling his annual stipend. “This announcement means you reject me,’ I told him. ‘Do not forget that you inherit a political system I built. You may exclude me on a personal and financial level, but you cannot reject the institutional inheritance in which you grew up. There is only one step between the two,” Juan Carlos writes in the book.
The book opens with his account of exile: in the summer of 2020 he left for Abu Dhabi, writing of the nostalgia he feels for Spain. ‘Because of pressure from the media and the government, following the revelation of a bank account I had in Switzerland and entirely unfounded accusations, I decided to leave, so as not to hinder the proper functioning of the Crown or inconvenience my son in carrying out his duties as sovereign,’ he explains.
On his undeclared fortune — €65 million received from the late king of Saudi Arabia — he concedes it was ‘a gift I did not know how to refuse. A grave mistake,’ while also lamenting: ‘I am the only Spaniard who receives no pension after almost forty years of service.’
When reflecting on his estranged wife, Queen Sofía, he recalls his youthful romances until, he writes, Franco told him it was time to ‘stop fooling around and get married’.
He recounts one of the defining moments of his reign — the attempted coup of 23 February 1981. ‘It is one of those nights I will always remember — and I think all Spaniards will too. I still have doubts and questions about how events unfolded and who was involved. The only certainty is that the military tried, with weapons, to betray Spain’s young democracy — my work — and I could not tolerate it,’ he writes.
Later chapters turn to his private life … ‘which is not so private’. He writes: ‘The media have attributed to me a dozen extramarital affairs, most of them completely fictitious. As if all my ties with the opposite sex had to be romantic relationships. As if friendship between men and women were impossible.’
Of his former mistress, Corinna zu Sayn-Wittgenstein – also known as Corinna Larsen, and with whom he has fought a long legal battle, he admits their affair was ‘the weakness of a man’ and a ‘mistake’, expressing remorse towards Sofía.
Juan Carlos’s downfall began in 2012, when it was revealed he had joined Larsen on an elephant-hunting trip in Botswana while Spain was mired in economic crisis. He abdicated two years later amid growing scandal.
The memoir closes with a note of contrition. ‘I know I may have disappointed some … I have acknowledged that in these pages. I am no saint. Power has not stifled my personality, which I have never hidden … I do not know whether the sacrifice of leaving Spain is useful or properly appreciated. It has changed me greatly as a man.’
He continues: ‘What matters most to me is that the Crown outlives me and continues to make Spain shine — that the spirit of the transition [to democracy] which united us persists for the good of the country, where I would like to find my place: that of a man who gave himself entirely to his nation.’
Since leaving Spain for exile in Abu Dhabi he has settled his tax debts and seen the investigations into him shelved, however, he has not returned — something that would be opposed by Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s socialist government and, reportedly, by his son, who has sought to rebuild the monarchy’s reputation.