Spain’s former king will spend the first day of his retirement from public life on Sunday lapping up the sunshine at a bullfight south of Madrid – exactly five years after his reign ended in abdication and scandal.

As emeritus king since his son, Felipe, took up the throne, 81-year-old Juan Carlos de Borbón has endured a series of humiliations as ill health and revelations about his private life have seen him shunted in and out of the spotlight.

According to reports, Juan Carlos was piqued after planning to accompany King Felipe VI at Saturday’s annual Armed Forces Day in Seville, only for his son and Queen Letizia to decide this was not a good idea.

Quite unexpectedly, last Monday Juan Carlos wrote in a letter to Felipe VI, posted on the Royal Household's website, that it was time to “start a new chapter in my life and complete my retirement from public life”.

As king, Juan Carlos kicked off the changes that created modern Spain by swearing allegiance to the fascist regime of dictator Francisco Franco before launching a democratic transition after the latter’s death in 1975. </s> Image zoom King Felipe and King Juan Carlos; Prince Charles and Queen Elizabeth Carlos Alvarez/Getty; Arthur Edwards -Pool/Getty

Five years after his abdication, King Juan Carlos I of Spain is retiring from public life.

The 81-year-old royal shared his plans to withdraw from public duties in a letter to his son, King Felipe VI, according to El Pais.

In Juan Carlos’ letter to Felipe IV, which was shared by La Zarzuela, reveals that the former king has been considering his retirement since his 80th birthday in Jan. 2018. The recent celebration of the 40th anniversary of the Spanish Constitution in Congress in December confirmed his decision.

“[It was] a solemn act, full of emotion for me, that evoked, with pride and admiration, the memory of the many people who made the political transition [to democracy] possible and renewed my feeling of permanent gratitude toward the Spanish people, the true architect and leading protagonist of that transcendental stage of our recent history,” King Juan Carlos said in the letter.

Image zoom King Juan Carlos and King Felipe of Spain Carlos Alvarez/Getty

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King Juan Carlos’ final official act was the presentation of the Spanish Order Awards 2019 in the San Lorenzo de El Escorial Royal Monastery on May 17, when he handed the prestigious prize to historian Miguel Ángel Ladero. His final royal trip was to Chile in March 2018, accompanied by his wife, Queen Sofia.

Image zoom Queen Letizia, King Felipe VI, King Juan Carlos and Queen Sofia of Spain A. Ware/NurPhoto via Getty

Juan Carlos’ retirement will officially begin on June 2, exactly five years after his abdication. The former Spanish king reportedly wanted to pass the job onto his son before Felipe, 51, grew old – comparing the situation to Prince Charles‘ nearly lifelong wait to be king.

He reportedly spoke to Rafael Spottorno, chief of the royal household, and said: “I do not want my son to wither waiting like Prince Charles,” according to El Mundo newspaper in 2014.

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Image zoom Prince Charles and Queen Elizabeth Tim Rooke/REX/Shutterstock

In a rare move, Queen Elizabeth publicly backed Charles as the next Commonwealth leader in April 2018.

The monarch, now 93, formally asked the Commonwealth Heads of Government to appoint her eldest son as her successor of the association of Britain and its former colonies.

Queen Elizabeth has been the group’s symbolic figurehead since 1952. Leaders were expected to discuss who should follow her in the role. The position is not hereditary, but Prince Charles is expected to get the nod. (As the Queen’s firstborn, Charles is the hereditary heir to the British throne, which he will automatically inherit upon his mother’s death.)

“It is my sincere wish that the Commonwealth will continue to offer stability and continuity for future generations and will decide that one day the Prince of Wales should carry on the important work started by my father in 1949,” the Queen said at the formal opening of the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting at Buckingham Palace.

Charles’ father, Prince Philip, also publicly retired from public life in August 2017.

“The Duke of Edinburgh will no longer undertake his own program of public engagements,” a statement from Buckingham Palace read. “The Captain General’s Parade will bring His Royal Highness’s individual program to a conclusion, although he may choose to attend certain events, alongside The Queen, from time to time.” </s> As he steps back, a look at the dramatic life of Spain’s Juan Carlos I

Madrid, Spain | AFP | He only discovered Spain when he was 10, was picked by dictator Francisco Franco to succeed him but instead steered his country to democracy. On Sunday, former king Juan Carlos I retires from public life.

“Such a long, full story, as if it were designed by an architect,” Spanish novelist Eduardo Mendoza said last year.

Born 81 years ago in Italy, the grandson of exiled Spanish king Alfonso XIII will go down in history as the one who gave both the throne back to the House of Bourbon and democracy back to Spain.

But the end of his 38-year reign (1975-2014) was clouded by several scandals until he abdicated in favour of his son Felipe VI.

On a winter day in 1948, a 10-year-old boy, escorted by a duke and viscount, arrives at Lisbon station.

This little prince “with his blond curls, fighting back tears,” boards a train bound for Spain, a country he doesn’t know, writes Jose Luis de Vilallonga in his biography “The King.”

Dictator Francisco Franco, who rules Spain with an iron fist since 1939 when he won a civil war, has decided to bring him over.

His father Juan de Bourbon might be wary of Franco but has accepted to entrust Juan Carlos to the dictator with the hope that one day, the throne will be returned to the Bourbons after Alfonso XIII fled the new republic in 1931.

Far from his family, Juan Carlos’ childhood is marked by church services and speeches vaunting the victory of Franco’s forces over the republican “reds.”

He also plays a lot of sport with friends who call him “Juanito” or else “your highness.”

When he is 18, tragedy hits when he accidentally kills his 14-year-old brother with a shot to the forehead while visiting his parents in Portugal, according to the biography “Juan Carlos” written by British historian Paul Preston.

Franco will make sure the accident is kept under wraps.

Trained in military schools, Juan Carlos will spend 27 years of his life in the shadow of the dictator who may have considered him as the son he never had but still “devoured police reports” about him, says Preston.

In 1962, Juan Carlos marries then Princess Sofia of Greece whom he met on a cruise

Seven years later, Franco names him as his successor. Two days after the death of the dictator, on November 22, 1975, he finally recovers his grandfather’s throne and becomes Juan Carlos I.

“Years of appearing with Franco, dejected and mute, has prompted the widespread idea that he lacked both intelligence and courage,” writes Preston.

But it wasn’t so. Going against his mission to preserve the Franco regime, the king choses to carry his country to democracy.

The Communist Party is legalised, political offences are amnestied and, after free elections in 1977, he is applauded as “the king of all Spaniards.”

Then he became the “national hero who saved democracy,” according to Mendoza.

When a military coup takes place on February 23, 1981 in his name, the king manages to put a stop to it and reassures the country in the middle of the night with a speech vaunting the “democratic process.”

But his life tips over in 2012 when aged 74, he falls over and breaks his hip during an elephant hunting trip in Botswana.

In deep financial crisis at the time, Spain discovers he was on a luxury safari paid for by a Saudi entrepreneur and that a German woman accompanying him is his lover.

He is forced to abdicate in 2014, “when he realises that the media has started reporting many irregularities in his life” like the numerous covert relationships of “this Casanova” or doubts about where his fortune came from, says author Pilar Urbano.

As such, the end of his reign is “arduous”, quite “sad” and far from exemplary, says the author of two biographies of former queen Sofia.

Now though, she says, by retiring from public life and no longer representing the Crown, he recovers his freedom, having always liked “doing what appeals to him, in secret.” </s> With palaces and gardens to rival Versailles, Aranjuez has long been part of Spanish royal life. For Juan Carlos de Borbon there could be no more fitting venue from which to say his adioses.

The former king has announced he will retire from official duties today after presiding, as guest of honour, over a bullfight in the city that inspired Joaquin Rodrigo’s Concierto de Aranjuez.

From a royal box in the arena, Juan Carlos, 81, for decades a prominent fixture of Spain’s public rituals, will observe the bloody pageant — he is a great fan of the corrida — while wondering, perhaps, how much longer such traditions can survive.

Just as bullfighting is under threat from a younger generation of Spaniards — many regard it as… </s> The brother-in-law of Spain's King Felipe VI has begun serving a nearly six-year sentence for fraud and tax evasion, Spanish prison authorities said Monday.

Inaki Urdangarin, who is married to King Felipe's sister Princess Christina, arrived Monday morning at a prison near Avila, about 62miles north of Madrid.

Urdangarin, a 50-year-old former handball player and Olympic medal winner, exploited his royal connections to overcharge regional governments for public events contracts, embezzling some 6million euros (£5.25million).

He was convicted to five years and ten months in prison in February last year, and his wife Princess Cristina was fined 136,950 euros (£120,000) as a beneficiary of her husband's crimes.

The corruption scandal aided in the erosion of the public image of the Spanish royal family and prompted the abdication in 2014 of Juan Carlos I, who ceded the throne to Felipe.

The retired Spanish handball player appealed the sentence before the Supreme Court, which cut the sentence slightly after overturning a part of the original ruling by the Mallorcan Court.

He may appeal the Supreme Court’s ruling before the Constitutional Court.

Urdangarin had been given five days to voluntarily turn himself in to begin serving his sentence after the Supreme Court rejected his appeal earlier this month.

The ministry official described the Brieva prison chosen by Urdangarin as a small facility with less than 100 inmates, most of them women.

The prison has a small module for men, but authorities could choose to send him elsewhere for security or internal organization reasons, the official said.

Spain's Royal House has said that it respects judicial decisions and King Felipe VI and Queen Letizia have not publicly commented on the result of the appeal.

The royal couple is on an official visit to the United States. On Monday they are scheduled to meet entrepreneurs and students in San Antonio, Texas, before traveling to Washington D.C. for a meeting Tuesday with President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump. </s> Iñaki Urdangarin was found guilty last year of embezzling millions of euros between 2004-2006 from a non-profit foundation he headed in Majorca.

Last week Spain's Supreme Court rejected his appeal and handed him a sentence of five years and 10 months in prison.

Urdangarin, just as any citizen, was allowed to choose where he wanted to serve his sentence.

Princess Cristina's husband is not the first man to serve in the Brieva prison. The former director of the Civil Guard Luis Roldán, convicted in 1998 to 31 years for embezzlement offences, was also held in the same male unit.

Brieva prison is located 100 kilometres north of Madrid and, despite it being a prison for women, it has four cells reserved for male inmates.

The prison is one of the smallest in Spain and was built in 1989.

It is the first time in modern Spanish history that a monarch's relative has gone to prison. The case caused an uproar in Spain, which contributed to the decision of King Felipe VI's father Juan Carlos I to abdicate in 2014. </s> Spanish media report that the brother-in-law of Spain's King Felipe VI is already in prison to begin serving a sentence of nearly six years for fraud and tax evasion

MADRID (AP) — The brother-in-law of Spain’s King Felipe VI has begun serving a nearly six-year sentence for fraud and tax evasion, Spanish prison authorities said Monday.

An official with the Interior Ministry’s prison management division said Inaki Urdangarin arrived Monday morning at a prison near Avila, about 100 kilometers north of Madrid. The official spoke anonymously, in line with ministry rules.

Urdangarin, a 50-year-old former Olympic handball medal winner married to the king’s sister, Cristina, is the closest person to the ruling Bourbon family to be imprisoned.

He was convicted to five years and 10 months in prison for embezzling about 6 million euros ($7 million) by exploiting his position in the royal family to obtain public contracts.

Cristina was fined 136,950 euros ($158,600) as a beneficiary of her husband’s crimes.

The corruption scandal helped erode the image of the Spanish royal family and prompted the abdication in 2014 of Juan Carlos I, who ceded the throne to Felipe.

Urdangarin had been given five days to voluntarily turn himself in to begin serving his sentence after the Supreme Court rejected his appeal earlier this month.

The ministry official described the Brieva prison chosen by Urdangarin as a small facility with less than 100 inmates, most of them women.

The prison has a small module for men, but authorities could choose to send him elsewhere for security or internal organization reasons, the official said.

Spain’s Royal House has said that it respects judicial decisions and King Felipe VI and Queen Letizia have not publicly commented on the result of the appeal.

The royal couple is on an official visit to the United States. On Monday they are scheduled to meet entrepreneurs and students in San Antonio, Texas, before traveling to Washington D.C. for a meeting Tuesday with President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump. </s> Spain’s Princess Cristina, the sister of King Felipe VI, has been cleared of helping her husband evade taxes after a year-long trial that has further tarnished the image of the royal family and done little to allay public concern over the apparent ubiquity of corruption at the highest levels of Spanish society.

Her husband, Iñaki Urdangarin, was sentenced to six years and three months in prison and fined more than €500,000 after being found guilty of charges including embezzlement, fraud, and tax evasion.

Cristina, 51, was the first royal to face criminal charges since the restoration of the Spanish monarchy in 1975 and could have gone to prison for eight years if she had been found guilty. Despite the acquittal, she was ordered to pay a €265,000 fine for “civil responsibility”.

The princess and her husband were among 18 co-defendants facing a total of 89 charges ranging from fraud and money laundering to trafficking of influences.

Urdangarin, a 49-year-old businessman and former Olympic handball player, was accused of taking advantage of his royal connections to win inflated public contracts to stage sporting and other events and then siphoning off the proceeds to fund a lavish lifestyle.



The case was heard in Palma de Mallorca, the regional capital of Spain’s Balearic Islands, because many of Urdangarin’s business deals under investigation related to the islands.

Neither Cristina nor her husband were in court for Friday’s verdict. Although they live in Lisbon, the couple and their four children were reported to be staying in Geneva.

Urdangarin and his former business partner Diego Torres were accused of embezzling about €6m (£4.6m) in public money that was paid to their non-profit organisation, the Nóos Institute, to organise events. Torres was given an eight-year prison term.

One of the companies that allegedly benefited from Nóos was Aizoon, a real estate firm that Urdangarin owned with his wife. Aizoon was labelled a “front company” in court documents.



The princess was accused of making personal use of Aizoon funds to pay for clothes and dance lessons for the couple’s children, as well as for work on their Barcelona mansion, lowering the firm’s taxable income.

The prosecution claimed Cristina could not have been unaware of her husband’s activities. Questioned in court in February 2014 before she or her husband had been charged, she said she took her husband at his word. During six hours of questioning, she replied “I don’t know” 188 times and “I don’t remember” on 55 occasions.

The princess ended up in court after the far-right pressure group Manos Limpias (Clean Hands) brought a tax evasion case against her using legal provision that allows private groups to start criminal proceedings.

However, the group’s own credibility suffered after its leader was detained for alleged extortion and other charges, and was accused of asking the princess’s lawyers for money in exchange for dropping its accusations against her.

King Felipe has endeavoured to improve his family’s public image since ascending to the throne after the abdication of his father, Juan Carlos, in 2014.

Details of the so-called Nóos case emerged in 2011, and another major turning point in the Spanish public’s view of their royal family occurred a year later when, at the height of the country’s economic crisis, Juan Carlos was pictured on an expensive hunting trip to Botswana.

Cristina and Urdangarin married in 1997 in a lavish ceremony in Barcelona and were bestowed the titles of Duke and Duchess of Palma by Juan Carlos.

The couple’s multimillion-euro mansion has been impounded by the courts and Cristina was notably absent from ceremonies marking Felipe’s ascension to the throne in June 2014.

Felipe removed Cristina and her sister Elena from royal duties when he became king and stripped Cristina of her title of Duchess of Palma a year later as she prepared to face trial. </s> Cristina ordered to pay fines and Inaki Urdangarin given six-year sentence for charges including fraud and tax evasion.

The husband of Spain's Princess Cristina has been sentenced to more than six years in prison on charges including fraud and tax evasion while the royal wife has been acquitted.

A panel of judges ruled on Friday that Cristina, the sister of King Felipe VI, was not guilty but she would be required to pay more than $280,000 in fines because the court considered that she indirectly benefited from her husband Inaki Urdangarin's fraud.

The couple were not called to court for the ruling. Both have lived in Switzerland with their four children since 2013, and have always denied any wrongdoing.

Miquel Roca, a lawyer with Cristina's defence team, said that the princess was "satisfied for the acknowledgement of her innocence" but that she was still convinced that her husband was not guilty.

"If we believed in the judicial system when the princess was made to sit in the dock, I think citizens can trust in it when she's absolved," Roca said in Barcelona.

A spokesperson for the Royal House told Spanish media that the royal family respected the court's decision.

There were no immediate comment from Felipe and Queen Letizia, who received news of the ruling during a visit to a museum in Madrid with the Hungarian president.

The case can be appealed in the Supreme Court, but it was not clear whether Urdangarin would choose to do so.

Urdangarin, a former Olympic handball player, had used his royal connections to win public contracts to put on events through his non-profit organisation, the Noos Foundation, then overcharged for the events and hidden millions of dollars in proceeds abroad, according to prosecutors.

Some of the foundation's money was transferred to a private company and used to pay for family holidays, home furnishings and theatre tickets, prosecutors said.

The trial, and the long investigation that preceded it, had been closely followed in a country inured to high-level political and banking corruption cases, and where inequality has grown in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis.

The inquiry heightened the impression among Spaniards that the royal family was out of touch with ordinary people just as Spain was suffering its worst recession of modern times.

Public support for the family eroded further when it emerged that King Juan Carlos had gone on an elephant hunting expedition in Africa at the height of the financial crisis. He abdicated in 2014 in favour of his son.

When he ascended the throne, Felipe removed his older sisters, Elena and Cristina, from royal duties as part of efforts to modernise the monarchy.

The following year he stripped Cristina of her title of Duchess of Palma. </s> Spain’s health minister, Carmen Montón, has resigned after becoming the latest senior politician to find her educational qualifications under scrutiny.

Montón stepped down on Tuesday night following a series of reports detailing irregularities in her master’s degree in interdisciplinary gender studies, which was awarded by King Juan Carlos University in Madrid seven years ago.

She insisted she had been “transparent and honest”, but an investigation by the online newspaper El Diario found discrepancies over her attendance and the marks awarded. Moreover, it emerged on Tuesday that Montón had plagiarised passages from Wikipedia and other websites in her final degree work.

The MP claimed she had done nothing wrong and, in an apparent reference to the opposition People’s party (PP) politicians who have faced questions over their degrees, said: “We’re not all the same.”

She paid tribute to Pedro Sánchez, the Socialist prime minister who appointed her after being sworn in three months ago, as she left office.

“Spanish men and women have a fantastic prime minister and I’ve informed him of my resignation so that this situation doesn’t get in the way,” Montón said.

Earlier that day, Sánchez had given the minister his backing. “She’s doing a great job and will carry on doing so,” he said.

The prime minister later tweeted his thanks: “In your 100 days at the helm of the health ministry, you have restored universal healthcare in our country and you’ve worked tirelessly to return and increase rights. Thanks, Carmen Montón, for your commitment to equality and social justice. Your brave decision does you credit.”

Montón is the second minister Sánchez has lost since he used a vote of no confidence to unseat his PP predecessor, Mariano Rajoy, amid public anger over the party’s corruption and cronyism.

In June, the culture minister, Màxim Huerta, resigned following media reports that he had avoided paying taxes while working as a TV journalist 10 years ago.

Pablo Casado, the new PP leader, has also faced questions over his academic record. Earlier this year, it emerged the postgraduate degree he claims to hold from Harvard had in fact been earned by attending a four-day course in Madrid. He has also admitted he was awarded a master’s degree in public regional law by King Juan Carlos University despite not being required to attend classes or take exams.

Spain’s supreme court is looking into Casado’s degree and will decide whether the investigations should continue. However, PP sources maintain that Casado’s case is very different from that of Montón, arguing their leader has not been accused of plagiarism or falsification.

In April, Cristina Cifuentes, the PP head of Madrid’s regional government, resigned after video footage emerged of her apparently being caught stealing two tubs of face cream seven years ago. Cifuentes had also been under pressure to quit over allegations of irregularities in her master’s degree from King Juan Carlos University.
King Juan Carlos I of Spain retires from public life five years after his abdication.