Spain’s monarch must lose legal immunity, says PM
Call for constitutional change as former king expected to avoid trial for alleged financial misdeeds
SPAIN’S prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, has said that his country’s monarch should be stripped of immunity from criminal prosecution after a series of scandals that forced Juan Carlos, the former king, into exile and bitterly divided the royal family.
A Spanish court is widely expected to drop an investigation into Juan Carlos’s alleged financial misdeeds, in part because none of his actions before his 2014 abdication can be tried.
Mr Sánchez, a Left-winger, said that the constitutional clause under which the sitting monarch enjoys immunity was “the product of another age”.
“I don’t think it is necessary to recognise that condition of a head of state,” Mr Sánchez said when asked in a radio interview about the description of the monarch as “inviolable”.
Mr Sánchez said granting immunity against prosecution was understandable in the context of Spain’s transition to democracy under Juan Carlos after the death of dictator Francisco Franco in 1975, but was no longer required “in an era of consolidated democracy”.
Juan Carlos was placed under investigation by the public prosecutor’s office at Spain’s Supreme Court in June last year in connection with the receipt of $100million (£73million) from the former king of Saudi Arabia. The money was allegedly a kickback. He has also been accused of possible money laundering and tax evasion involving funds held in Switzerland, Mexico and Jersey.
Recent leaks from the prosecutor’s office to Spanish media suggest that the investigation will end without any formal charges being levelled at Juan Carlos, who left Spain in secret last August before it emerged that he was living in Abu Dhabi. Since the probe began, he has paid more than €5 million (£4.2 million) in back taxes to Spain’s treasury.
Juan Carlos is also understood to be seeking to avoid a possible trial in the UK by pleading sovereign immunity after his onetime lover, Corinna zu Sayn-wittgenstein, filed a civil lawsuit accusing him of harassment, including alleged threats and defamation.
The UK High Court will have to decide whether it has jurisdiction in the case given that the main defendant is a former monarch who was still on the throne when some of the alleged harassment took place. King Felipe VI removed his father from Spain’s civil list in March 2020 after The Daily Telegraph revealed that Juan Carlos had included his son’s name as a beneficiary of two offshore funds. Felipe VI also renounced any inheritance Juan Carlos may have been preparing for him.
Mr Sánchez said he felt sorrow on behalf of King Felipe, a monarch “committed to being exemplary”.
Juan Carlos, Mr Sánchez added, should “offer explanations to Spaniards on the reasons that led him to leave Spain and the reports we are seeing in the media”.