Spain’s disgraced ex-king goes into exile

JUAN CARLOS I, the disgraced former king of Spain, is quitting the country and going into exile in the wake of a series of damaging financial scandals.

Juan Carlos said he was leaving Spain because of the “public repercussions of certain episodes of my private life”.

In a letter to his son, King Felipe VI, published on the royal household’s website, he wrote: “Guided by the conviction to best serve the people of Spain, its institutions and you as king, I inform you of my decision at this time to go into exile outside Spain.”

King Felipe wrote back to his father, emphasising the “historical importance of his [father’s] reign as a legacy and [his] political and institutional work of service to Spain and democracy”.

It comes after King Felipe faced increasing pressure from within Spain’s Left-wing government to distance himself from his 82-year-old father after a scandal surrounding the former monarch’s financial affairs. Pedro Sánchez, Spain’s prime minister, recently said he found the latest disclosures about the former king “disturbing”. Juan Carlos’s decision to move abroad is designed to restore the reputation of the monarchy.

However, Pablo Echenique, parliamentary spokesman for the far-left

Unidas Podemos party, the junior partner in Spain’s coalition government, said that the former king’s exile failed to resolve deep problems with the Spanish monarchy. “What does that solve? How does this improve the monarch? How does this improve our democracy? Nothing,” he said.

Javier Sanchez-junco, a lawyer for the former king, issued a statement saying his client was not trying to escape justice by going into exile and would remain available to prosecutors.

It was not clear where the former monarch, who ruled Spain for nearly 40 years until his abdication in 2014, would move to or when he would leave the

Zarzuela palace outside Madrid, where he has lived for 56 years. However, he will keep his title of King Emeritus.

According to a report in the El Mundo newspaper, he has already left the country. A huge hunt was on last night to find where he was making his new home, with favourites rumoured to be Portugal, Italy, Switzerland, Saudi Arabia or even Latin America.

The fall of a monarch – who was once respected for ushering in democracy after the death in 1975 of dictator General Francisco Franco – began in 2018 in Switzerland when a prosecutor started an investigation into the ex-king’s allegedly murky finances.

The prosecutor opened an investigation into Juan Carlos’s ex-lover and the former king’s lawyer and financial adviser, both based in Geneva. The Swiss investigation, probing possible money laundering relating to a $100million (£80million) gift to Juan Carlos from the King of Saudi Arabia in 2008, is still in progress.

Juan Carlos is also being investigated for the first time by Spain’s Supreme Court over his role in alleged bribes related to a high-speed train deal in Saudi Arabia.

In March, after The Daily Telegraph revealed that Juan Carlos and his son were both named as beneficiaries of a

Panama-based fund started in 2008 with the $100m “donation”, King Felipe released a statement renouncing any financial inheritance from his father. Juan Carlos was also stripped of his royal allowance.

In 2012, when he was discovered on a secret elephant hunting safari in Botswana with his former mistress, public opinion began to turn against the bon vivant monarch who was fond of fast cars, women he was not married to, and yachts.

Damage done by a series of scandals in the latter years of his reign, meant he faced increasing hostility in Spain, despite his previous good standing.