Since going into exile in Abu Dhabi in August 2020, surrounded by financial scandals – revelations about his accounts in Switzerland, funds not declared to the tax authorities or large donations from the Saudi monarchy – Juan Carlos has not had not set foot in Spain again, nor seen his son, King Felipe VI. Two and a half months after the last of the judicial investigations still open in Spain against him was dismissed, at the beginning of March – like the others before – it is finally done. Thursday, May 19, the former king, aged 84, landed in Galicia for a short stay supposed to allow « normalize » little by little his presence in the kingdom.
For the moment, this one does not have much of “normal” anymore. Arrived at Vigo airport on board a private jet, owned by an Angolan company, without anyone knowing who paid for the trip, he was greeted by a few curious people throwing “Long live el rey! » (« Long live the king ») and swarms of journalists, analyzing the slightest of his gestures and debating the relevance and conditions of his return.
Housed in the villa of the president of the nautical club in the village of Sanxenxo, his friend Pedro Campos, he was to attend a regatta this weekend. From there, he should go to Madrid, where he is expected Monday, by the royal family, at the Zarzuela Palace. King Felipe VI, who, seeing the Spanish monarchy tremble, had pushed him to leave the country, kept the greatest possible distance from his father: the palace, moreover, laid down a condition for the arrival of the patriarch that he don’t stay there overnight.
Long considered one of the main architects of the democratic transition, the king emeritus, who reigned from the end of the death of the dictator FrancFabuisco Franco, in 1975, until his abdication, in 2014, disappointed many Spaniards. Others ended up finding his forced exile and family breakdown too severe.
If the People’s Party (PP, right) wished him the » welcome « recalling that “Spain is his country”the Spanish Socialist Workers Party (PSOE), in power, preferred not to comment « a personal decision » which does not have “nothing to do with the government”. On the side of the radical left, Unidas Podemos, which governs in coalition with the socialists and appears resolutely republican, estimated that it still has to » accountable » to the Spaniards.
A letter to his son
All the investigations opened in Spain against the former monarch have been closed without further action, without his having to give any explanations: not only because he enjoyed royal inviolability at the time of the facts brought to the attention of the justice, but also because the possible offenses he could have committed were time-barred, he made voluntary tax adjustments or the evidence was lacking. For Juan Carlos, the case is closed. « Once known the decrees of the general prosecutor’s office which close without follow-up the investigations of which I have been the subject, it seems appropriate to me to consider my return to Spain »he wrote in a letter sent to his son on March 5, while ensuring that he wanted “ continue to reside permanently and stably in Abu Dhabi”where he found » tranquility « .
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