King Casanova
As his son pays us a State visit, a new book says Spain’s Juan Carlos has had 5,000 lovers — and even tried his luck with Diana
With a dashing stoop of his 6ft 5in frame, Spain’s King Felipe radiated old world charm as he greeted the Queen with a kiss to each cheek yesterday amid the pomp of a red-carpet welcome on horse Guards Parade.
his impeccable manners and solicitous behaviour seemed a world away from grubby new claims that erupted just as the Spanish State Visit to Britain began, about the extraordinary sex life of his father, Juan Carlos, the ex-king whom the bearded Felipe replaced as monarch three years ago.
According to an explosive new book, Juan Carlos is a sex addict who had hundreds of relationships even after marriage to Queen Sofia, Felipe’s mother.
Princess Diana is rumoured to have been just one of the young ladies the ex-king, now 79, pursued in a romantic career in which — like his namesake, the seducer Don Juan — he is said to have bedded almost 5,000 women.
Claims about the libidinous former monarch are not new. Five years ago, a Spanish society writer claimed Juan Carlos had slept with 1,500 women. But the new allegations, compiled by a retired high-ranking Spanish Army officer, are staggering for the sheer detail about the number of his conquests. in one sixmonth period alone, the exking is said to have had 62 lovers, while, in what the book calls his ‘passionate period’ between 1976 and 1994, Juan Carlos apparently bedded 2,154 women.
Even in his so-called ‘winter period’ of 2005 to 2014, when he was aged between 67 and 76 and apparently slowing down, the book says he slept with 191 different lovers. Drawing on what he claims were confidential reports provided by spies of Spain’s former dictator General Franco, the author Amadeo Martinez ingles claims Juan Carlos had 332 sexual relationships while at military academy ‘which is good for any actor specialising in porn films — four per week’.
Martinez ingles, now a military historian and essayist, describes his book, Juan Carlos: the King Of 5,000 Lovers, as the ‘true story of an amoral king, unscrupulous, shameless, ambitious, authoritarian, authentic sexual predator’ who ‘has had thousands of sexual adventures’.
the book goes on to label him ‘an authentic royal stud’, a ‘monarch who might have left behind him more than 20 of his own children’. he says the list of Juan Carlos’s best-known lovers ‘represent the tip of a monumental sexual iceberg.’
ThE explosive allegations will do nothing to improve the former king’s image at home, where his shameless hedonism has provoked criticism for years. his popularity, once high, began to decline during the banking crisis, which crippled the Spanish economy, when it emerged he had taken part in an extravagant elephant shoot in Africa just as his country was plunging into a financial abyss.
imperious and suave, Juan Carlos looked every inch the oldstyle monarch, with the autocratic manners to go with it. he loved hunting, skiing and yachts — and bedding the opposite sex.
For years it has been an open secret in royal circles in Madrid that he is such a keen womaniser that the only woman he does not spend much time with is his wife, Greek-born Sofia.
Juan Carlos, who was groomed by Franco to succeed him and was crowned king in 1975, the year the dictator died, allegedly became estranged from his wife after the queen found him in a compromising position with an actress, Sara Montiel. She denied any affair. According to one account, this happened a couple of months after the coronation. When Juan Carlos sent for a new barber and transformed his appearance, Sofia was convinced he was sprucing himself up for a lover.
A few days later, he packed his suitcase and said he was going hunting near toledo. ‘it’s an allmale outing, you’d be bored,’ he told his wife. Unwisely, she decided to surprise him by arriving at the estate in the middle of the night with their children, the eldest of whom was 12.
She burst through the door, brushed past the servants and, taking the stairs two at a time, discovered her husband in flagrante, allegedly with Montiel.
But even being caught by his entire family did not encourage the king to mend his ways. According to Martinez ingles, Juan Carlos took his first lover at 16 and was aged 66 when he took his last mistress, Corinna zu SaynWittgenstein, a voluptuous German-born divorcee whom he liked to refer to as his ‘Prozac’.
insisting he has no personal interest in the love life of the former king, the author claims the Spanish people have a right to know about Juan Carlos’s ‘obsession’ with sex because he had received ‘enormous’ amounts of money from the public purse for more than four decades.
When it came to mistresses, he was not choosy. Martinez ingles says there were two types of lovers for the royal bed: ‘Actresses, stars and singers’ who formed ‘an authentic harem... available 24 hours a day’; and anonymous beauties, many of whom were foreigners. he used country houses, private apartments and luxury hotels around Madrid for his conquests. On occasions, he travelled abroad for assignations, which often took place in the homes of his lovers.
his favourite form of transport for these discreet liaisons was a helicopter, which was at his personal disposal. the author divides the ex-monarch’s sex life into a number of stages. First, the period between the summer of 1954 (when Juan Carlos was 16) and September 1955, which he calls ‘the adolescent era’. Juan Carlos’s first encounter was said to be with Maria Gabriella de Saboya, daughter of the last king of italy.
then comes his two years at Spain’s military academy for officers, where he was known as Cadet Juanito. there, he was said to have had 394 lovers. From September 1957 to December 1959, when he was at the Special Military Academy, young Juan Carlos is said to have slept with 232 women.
the numbers increase for the ‘university period’ of 1960 to 1962 with 403 lovers. But over the next six years, from 1963 to 1969, they come down to a mere 336. Why so? Juan Carlos had wed and become a father to three children.
BUt they are soon on their way up again when, as crown prince and Franco’s successor between 1969 and 1975, Juan Carlos is said to have taken 468 lovers. the final period is from the years 1976 to 2014, when he stepped down from the throne. in that time, says the book, Juan Carlos accumulated an astonishing total of 2,953 lovers.
Martinez ingles claims his forensic analysis of Juan Carlos’s bedhopping was possible because he was ‘the most spied upon [individual] in the entire history of Spain, and i think the world’.
‘he had all of Franco’s intelligence services on him. Anything he did was transmitted by all means possible and within two minutes Franco had the information on his desk. it was known whom he was sleeping with, when, where and even the names of the girls he was with.’
the spying continued after Franco’s death and the former soldier says he received a lot of help from the military academy where the ex-king had a bachelor pad. he says Juan Carlos was only left alone on his one-year honeymoon, on Franco’s instructions. Otherwise his ‘outings’ were a matter of state interest.
‘this man used the services of the state, especially the army, to have a good time.’
Certainly his encounters have attracted lurid headlines over the
years. Among his conquests was said to have been a former Belgian governess called Liliane Sartiau.
In 2015, her daughter Ingrid brought a paternity suit to the Spanish courts. But the writ was thrown out on the basis of the king’s ‘legal inviolability’ under Spanish law.
Earlier this year it was reported that Spain’s secret service had paid Barbara Rey, a former Miss World contestant, more than £2.5 million to prevent her spilling the beans on her alleged affair with the womanising former sovereign.
The book says Juan Carlos did slow down after clashing with the government in Madrid over the scandal involving Ms Rey, the ex-wife of a former circus entertainer, in 1966.
Years later after a burglary at her Madrid home, the former beauty queen, who has always denied receiving any hush money, claimed documents, negatives and tapes which could compromise ‘important people’ had been stolen.
On Diana, Martinez Ingles has nothing to add to previous claims. Five years ago in a book about Juan Carlos, the Spanish socialite Pilar Eyre claimed the then king had made a ‘tactile’ advance on Diana during a holiday the princess and Prince Charles spent with their sons and the Spanish royals on Majorca in 1986.
Eyre alleges Diana told her bodyguard Ken Wharfe that Juan Carlos fancied her. Apparently, the king made all sorts of excuses to get physically close to her and used to love bending down with her and inviting her to stroke his old German shepherd dog, Archie. According to Eyre, rumours of an affair intensified later when some photos showed Diana sunbathing topless in Spain.
These were touted around the world’s publications, only to be taken off the market when someone in Spain paid $45,000 for them.
That someone is rumoured to have been Juan Carlos, who wanted to protect the Princess’s reputation.
Diana always denied anything untoward happened with Juan Carlos, telling me that although she found the king charming, he could be a little ‘too attentive.’
So has the bearded King Felipe followed in his father’s footsteps?
No, says the author: ‘He has not had any nocturnal adventures, only official girlfriends. And absolutely not since he married. He doesn’t dare because [his wife] Letizia wears the royal trousers.’