THE KING of Spain made an unprecedented apology yesterday for going on an elephant hunting trip to Africa.
“I’m very sorry. I made a mistake. It won’t happen again,” King Juan Carlos said as he left a Madrid hospital following surgery on his right hip, which he fractured in three places in a fall at the safari camp in Botswana last Friday.
News of the trip provoked a barrage of criticism over the extravagant way of life of the 74-year-old King at a time when Spaniards are suffering harsh austerity measures.
Weeks ago, he told a group of students that Spain’s youth unemployment was giving him “sleepless nights” and the elephant shoot led to calls from some Left-wing leaders for him to abdicate.
It also provoked outrage from animal rights campaigners, who condemned the King’s decision to hunt an endangered species. Demonstrators had gathered to protest outside the hospital where he was being treated.
The Spanish branch of the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) on Tuesday said it would seek to remove the King as its honorary president, a position he has held since 1968, following the expedition to Botswana, one of the few places that issue licences to cull elephant herd numbers.
Pictures of the King posing in front of an elephant shot on a similar trip to Bot- swana in 2006 were published across the world as an online petition calling for the King to be removed as patron collected more than 80,000 signatures.
Juan Carlos del Olmo, the secretary general of WWF Espana, said the King’s position as patron had become untenable. “It’s a problem of the image it sends nationally and internationally rather than the issue of elephant conservation in Botswana.”
Spain’s Royal
Palace has declined
to comment on the trip except to say it was a “private visit” but newspaper reports yesterday disclosed that he had been the guest of Mohamed Eyad Kayali, a Syrianborn Saudi businessman. Mr Kayali, reportedly the right-hand man of Prince Salman bin Abdul Aziz, Saudi’s defence minister, was said to be a key figure in securing a lucrative contract for a Spanish consortium to build a high-speed rail link between Mecca and Medina worth €6.7billion (£5.4billion).