Royal mistress’s claims add to crisis
Talk of referendum grows in Madrid as scandal surrounding former king faces court exposure, write Roland Oliphant and James Badcock in Madrid.
They are one of Europe’s oldest royal dynasties, defying Napoleonic invasion, two republics and a fascist dictatorship to retain their grip on the Spanish throne.
But now Spain’s royal family is facing its greatest crisis of legitimacy in a generation.
A Sunday Telegraph investigation into financial irregularities published last weekend rocked the royal household and shredded public trust.
And the palace now faces further scandal as a court prepares to hear claims from a former royal mistress that she was hounded by a rogue spy chief after falling out of favour.
Corinna zu Sayn-Wittgenstein, 56, a German-born businesswoman and socialite who was once a lover of Spain’s former King Juan Carlos, was due to testify tomorrow but the hearing has been cancelled due to coronavirus.
She claims in an affidavit submitted to the High Court in London that General Felix Sanz Roldan, the former head of the country’s National Intelligence Centre, orchestrated a campaign intimidation and harassment against her, on behalf of Juan Carlos, 82 – styled king emeritus since his 2014 abdication.
Zu Sayn-Wittgenstein claims the harassment began in April 2012, shortly after she joined Juan Carlos on a controversial hunting trip to Botswana.
That month, she says, she received a text message from a private security company she had never heard of. It said her ‘‘friends in Spain’’ had asked the company to take care of her, and it deployed former French
Foreign Legionnaires at her flat in Monaco.
In her affidavit, she says she believes the company had been hired by Roldan as a front for an operation to sweep her flat for any documents that could be embarrassing to the king.
When she refused to allow it, she says, she received messages she took as threats, culminating in a meeting withRoldan at the Connaught hotel in London in May 2012.
‘‘His words were that he ‘could not guarantee [my] physical safety or that of [my] children,’ unless I complied with his instructions,’’ she said in her written testimony.
Zu Sayn-Wittgenstein claims the harassment campaign has continued, including mysterious break-ins at her British home. Her legal team have written to the Foreign Secretary and the heads of MI5 and MI6 to say Spanish intelligence agents have been running a rogue operation on British soil.
Roldan denies the allegations. He and Spain’s royal household were approached for comment but declined.
The case is the latest in a series of embarrassments for Juan Carlos, who won widespread respect for overseeing Spain’s peaceful return to democracy after the death of Franco in 1975, but abdicated under a cloud after a series of scandals around his private life.
More dangerously for the monarchy, it threatens to undermine the efforts of his son and successor King Felipe VI to convince the Spanish public that he is running a more transparent and ethical royal household than his father.
The scandal first came to light in 2018 through the leaking of secret recordings of zu SaynWittgenstein from 2015, in which she alleged serious financial wrongdoing by the former king. As a result of the leaked tape, a Swiss prosecutor launched an investigation.
No charges have been brought but documents unearthed have linked both Juan Carlos and King Felipe to a private fortune maintained in previously undisclosed offshore foundations.
Last week, the Telegraph revealed Felipe had been named as a beneficiary of a fund holding a €65 million (NZ$122 million) gift from Saudi Arabia given to Juan Carlos when he was on the throne.
In a dramatic attempt to address public concerns, King Felipe last week renounced any inheritance his father might leave him and cut off Juan Carlos’s allowance. Editorials in Spain’s main newspapers tried to mobilise support for his policy of attempting to draw a line between the murky dealings in the old monarch’s past and the ethical new leaf turned by his son.
Jose Antonio Zarzalejos, a former editor of the ultraroyalist ABC newspaper, said that King Felipe must go much further to repair the damage, shifting from steps taken in the family ambit to a genuine political and institutional reform.
‘‘He must physically remove Juan Carlos from all use and enjoyment of the Zarzuela palace facilities, public servants and vehicles, and, if possible, send him far away, Zarzalejos told The Telegraph.
‘‘The best thing would be for him to agree to exile himself abroad.’’
Antonio Torres del Moral, a professor of constitutional law, said: ‘‘The king must immediately explain himself on public television, giving excuses or reasons for what he has and hasn’t done. It is impossible to resolve a problem with obscurity and silence.
‘‘He must explain why he kept back such grave information for a year after finding out about it.’’
But in his first public appearance after The Telegraph’s revelations, King Felipe made no reference to the royal scandal.
As he encouraged Spaniards to pull together to fight the Covid-19 pandemic in a televised address to the nation on Thursday, many Spaniards made their feelings known about the matter.
In lockdown because of the virus, they followed a social media appeal and bashed pots and pans from their balconies as a way of telling Juan Carlos to donate to hospitals the €65 million he received from the Saudi regime.
In a poll for the digital newspaper El Confidencial last year to mark the fifth anniversary of King Felipe’s coronation, 51 per cent of Spaniards were in favour of a monarchy, with 46 per cent wanting a republic. But the shock waves of recent days have convinced many of the need for a referendum on Spain’s tpe of government.
‘‘It’s very hard to see the monarchy surviving,’’ said Javier Perez Royo, a professor of constitutional law at Seville University. ‘‘We are in a very delicate and special situation. We have to ask Spaniards if they want to live in a republic or a monarchy.’’
– Telegraph Group