Juan Carlos I has left the Zarzuela Palace a few minutes after nine at night, after an 11-hour visit to what was his home for 57 years. There he has been seen with several of his relatives, with Felipe VI at the head. It is the first time that he has met his son and his wife, Queen Sofia, since August 2020, when he decided to go live abroad to try to cushion the damage that his scandals were doing to the monarchy.
According to the statement made public by the Casa del Rey, father and son have maintained “ample talk time” about “family issues as well as about different events and their consequences in Spanish society” since the emeritus decided to move to Abu Dhabi. Next, the note specifies, there has been a family lunch with Juan Carlos I in which Felipe, Letizia, the infanta Sofía, Elena and her children and the infanta Margarita and Carlos Zurita have participated. Queen Sofia has not been able to share lunch properly, the statement details, because she has tested positive after her trip from Miami. However, she has stayed in the same room with the family with the “mandatory mask and the corresponding ventilation measures”. Felipe VI has finally decided not to provide a photograph of the meeting, to frame the relationship with his father in the strictly family sphere.
Plane to Abu Dhabi
the emeritus has arrived at 10.03 am to the grounds of the Palace of the Operetta and has entered waving from the car. Fifty people were waiting for him with Spanish flags on the road that deviates towards the first control of the Civil Guard of the headquarters of the head of state. “Long live the king!” they shouted. The emeritus has flown from Sanxenxo (Pontevedra) to the Baraja’s airport on the private plane that brought him last Thursday from Abu Dhabi (United Arab Emirates). And for that country, where she has fixed his residence for now, she has left after the family reunion. Juan Carlos I has not spent a night at the Zarzuela because the current King has not considered it appropriate and the Government had also advised against it. It was a decision made for months by the emeritus. In this Monday’s statement, in fact, the House wanted to recall that circumstance and that in March the former head of state already left in writing in a letter to his son that, “both in his visits and if in the future he were to reside again in Spain”, will stay in residences “of a private nature”.
The first visit has caused considerable reputational damage to the monarchy, with acid criticism from the Executive itself and the nationalist and independence forces. The House of the King had made it clear to the emeritus that he wanted a Discreet First Trip, but it has been quite the opposite: a journey that began with leisure, in a three-day regatta in Galicia, and followed by the minute by the media. The monarch came to mock the repeated request for “explanations” that the Government had demanded from him through the mouth of several ministers and also the president, Pedro Sanchez. “Explanations of what?” He replied to a journalist in Sanxenxo on Sunday before letting out a laugh. According to the spokeswoman for the Executive, Isabel Rodríguez, the former head of state “could have been much more careful on this first visit. The PP considers that the Government is trying to “discredit” the Head of State.
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Sources close to Juan Carlos I and also ministers privately admit that the emeritus does not consider that he has done anything “bad” and, above all, opposes it to his role in the democratic transition. The prosecution archived the open proceedings but certified irregularities. incurred in tax crimes, but he could not be denounced because they had prescribed, because of his inviolability or because he regularized the situation with the Treasury. It is also not ruled out that he could commit bribery and money laundering, but he could not be prosecuted for the same reasons.
The next June 10, the monarch wants to return to Spain to attend another regatta at the Sanxenxo yacht club.