Since the ban on Juan Carlos I was lifted, there have been reports and documentaries demystifying his figure and revealing the excesses he committed during his tenure, both for the businesses from which he benefited and for behavior in his personal life that could be classified as dissolute. For years the infidelities of the monarch have been hinted at and rumors have been made about the illegitimate way in which he was enriching himself, but no one dared to firmly denounce what was happening. It is curious now to see some veteran journalists boast of what they knew but until recently they have kept quiet.
It is true that the social and media situation has changed to the point where we have already seen on platforms and on open television all kinds of journalistic investigations into the possible ways in which the emeritus has been unfaithful to his wife and how he benefited from his influence to line the pockets of his relatives and his own. HBO premiered a few months ago one of the most controversial docuseries, especially since it included unpublished audios of Bárbara Rey, in which their relationship was confirmed (before the vedette herself decided to go through the sets telling it out loud).
Now HBO returns to Zarzuela to review, once again, the day to day in that palace, to reveal the open secrets around the royal family. The curious thing is that this time the protagonist is Queen Sofía, although the series places her all the time around King Juan Carlos, as if she had no entity of her own. She tells us how she met him, how the first years of her relationship were when Franco was still alive, his marriage in crisis during democracy, and her separation after the abdication. The figure of the queen always counted based on her husband, as if she were only her shadow, an appendage of him. Nothing else. And although it may seem reductionist, perhaps it is so and there are no other possible readings. But it is disappointing that in a docuseries dedicated to her, so many minutes are devoted to him, to recounting her disagreements with her father, don Juan; to the friendships that he had and that are supposed to have led him astray -from Mario Conde to the Albertos-, or to extramarital affairs with women like Marta Gayà or Corinna Larsen.
And what about Sofia? What interests has she had beyond being her wife? What other relationships or feelings has she cultivated? Hardly any of this is described in this work signed by David Trueba and Jordi Ferrerons. She dismisses herself by saying that the queen barely had a social life and that her greatest interest has been that her son ended up being proclaimed king. Even to describe one of the hardest moments he has had to face, that of his mother’s death, it is done from the perspective of the king, explaining the way in which he hid it from him because they were on vacation and he returned deceived to know the news.
“Always two steps behind the King”, indicate some of the guests of ‘Sofía y la vida real’, a four-episode production already available on HBO that has the testimonies of journalists such as Carmen Rigalt, Luis María Ansón, Jaime Peñafiel, Carmen Enríquez, Pilar Urbano or Mabel Galaz, whose professional career has been associated with the agenda of the monarchs. Politicians such as Ana Pastor, José Bono, María Teresa Fernández de la Vega, Iñaki Anasagasti or José Manuel García Margallo also participate.
The documentary briefly narrates the protagonist’s childhood, marked by exile in Greece during World War II and the uprooting suffered by her family in the 20th century. From there arises the cold character with which she is associated with the queen. From there, the series recounts the first meetings between Juan Carlos and Sofía, his interest in the Italian princesses and the ‘folk’ way in which she finally asked him to marry her. “The crown above all things” is the maxim that flies over this production and that serves to justify why she has forgiven deceit and humiliating situations in recent decades.
Victim, resigned wife, great professional, discreet woman. That is the role assigned to Sofía in this series in which only two occasions are remembered in which the queen stepped out of that very correct and institutional role: in the book by Pilar Urbano in which she expressed her conservative ideas and when she has had to defend his children (as when he went to Washington to visit the infanta Cristina ‘exiled’ there after the Noos case). In any case, if HBO’s previous approach to the royal family was titled ‘Save the King’, this could well have been called ‘Save the Queen’, because of the impeccable portrait she makes of her.
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