Ten years have passed since one of the most transcendental episodes of the reign of John Charles I that will go down in the history books. On April 14, 2012, Zarzuela reported that the then head of state had broken his right hip in a fall suffered in Botswana, where he was hunting elephants. The uproar was significant for several reasons: the main one, because the Monarch had gone on a luxury trip while the Spanish suffered the consequences of the cuts that the Government of Mariano Rajoy had approved to stop the deficit; the second and more relevant to the life of Juan Carlos I, because Spain found out that he was accompanied by a woman named Corinna Larsen. In a matter of days, the media published that he had a relationship with her. sentimental relationship. In total, with some parentheses, both were seeing each other between 2004 and early 2015.
“Corinna squeezed him, she saw herself in the role of queen, but he knew that she could not be his queen & rdquor ;, recounts a former adviser to the monarch
“April 2012 was a bad month for Juan Carlos I, but for history with capital letters it was february 2004, when he met Corinna. That was his greatest misfortune & rdquor ;, affirms a friend of the monarch remembering the date revealed by the journalist Ana Rosemary in the book ‘Endgame”. This friend knew about the German businesswoman when nobody knew yet. This source, who does not want to appear with names and surnames in this report, explains that during the first years of their relationship, “until 2010 & rdquor ;, Juan Carlos “fantasized & rdquor; with divorcing Queen Sofia and marrying her. “Corinna left him in 2015. Little lasted after the abdication. She no longer interested him & rdquor ;, she continues.
“All of us who were around the King and loved him a little told him: leave her, she’s going to screw up your life & rdquor ;, he continues. And so it has been. The consequences of the relationship and the breakup are still alive and, at the moment, Juan Carlos I is facing a civil lawsuit in London filed by his ex-lover for harassment, illegal monitoring and defamation. According to Larsen, alleged agents of the National Intelligence Center (CNI) They intimidated the businesswoman in London and Monaco, between 2012 and 2020, so that she would not say anything about Juan Carlos.
“As a teenager & rdquor;
“He lost the oremus. He behaved like a teenager & rdquor ;, explains a former adviser to the former head of state. Without hardly knowing each other, Juan Carlos I opened up to him one afternoon. “I am in love and I am the only Spaniard who cannot be divorced & rdquor ;, he blurted out more than 10 years ago. “Corinna pressed him, she saw herself in the role of queen, but he knew that she could not be his queen & rdquor ;, he recounts. “The King prepared his golden retirement with her. I think that is the 65 million euros that he paid her,” he explains in reference to the income he made in 2012. The abdication in Felipe VI was in 2014.
“I am in love and I am the only Spaniard who cannot be divorced & rdquor ;, the King told an advisor more than 10 years ago now
The relationship with the German businesswoman carried the skull of all the workers of the Zarzuela. Between 2005 and 2009, when they returned from official acts, the cars arrived at the Palace, but soon they left again. The King went to sleep at the Angorrilla farm, which is in the mount del pardo, near the Zarzuela. It is a residence that belongs to the properties “exclusively affected & rdquor; to the head of state, an excuse that freed the Rajoy Executive from giving further explanations in March 2013, when it was learned that Corinna had lived there for a few seasons with her young son.
In those years, the Monarch’s main advisers, headed by the head of the King’s House, Alberto Aza, who held that position between 2002 and 2011, tried to convince Juan Carlos of the dangerous consequences for the Crown of his relationship with a person with the character of Corinna. From those years is the phrase: “Either leave her or leave him [su cargo]”. The monarch’s collaborators had contact with her at various times. She even stayed at the Planas Clinic to accompany him in 2010 and 2011, when Juan Carlos I underwent surgery for a pulmonary nodule and recovered from a knee operation.
The German businesswoman came to stay with him at the Planas Clinic when he underwent surgery in 2010 and 2011
The Froilan episode
Botswana brought Corinna Larsen to light and with her a way of doing and hiding that put the Crown in danger after the earthquake that had already led, in 2011, to the corruption investigation of the King’s son-in-law, Iñaki Urdangarin.
“He was particularly unlucky, because in those days of the hunt in April 2012, all Spaniards wondered where Juan Carlos I was. If his grandson had not happened, perhaps they would have been able to hide the fall in Botswana & rdquor ;, recalls the friend King. He refers to the fact that, on April 9, Froilán, son of Elena and Jaime de Marichalar, suffered an accident with a shotgun that he was handling. The boy, then 13, shot himself in the right foot. His parents, his grandmother, his uncles Felipe and Letizia and his cousins Leonor and Sofía went to visit him at the hospital. Where was the grandfather?
Juan Carlos I did not speed up his return. Despite Froilán’s accident and questions about his whereabouts, he continued in Botswana and returned urgently when he tripped over a step at five in the morning (this was Zarzuela’s explanation) and broke his hip.
The monarch’s team thought that it was necessary for the King to address the Spanish and give them some explanation. Before leaving the hospital he recorded a video with TVE journalists apologizing for the luxury hunt.
More explanations
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Over the years, Juan Carlos I has thought that this gesture was a mistake because it showed weakness. Now, after the multiple contrasted information about his hidden fortune, Pedro Sánchez believes that he must give “explanations & rdquor; to the Spaniards before returning to Spain from his self-exile in the United Arab Emirates and he has publicly requested it on several occasions. In the environment of the former head of state they do not quite see how “a King” can do that, “what does Sánchez expect&rdquor ;. “An interview in prime time? & rdquor ;, sources from your environment wonder.
The phrase that he recorded then in the hospital and that has been left for the video library was: “I am very sorry, I was wrong and it will not happen again & rdquor ;. The problem was that it happened again.