The history of the king emeritus for Zarzuela stopped on January 29, 2020. As a member -not active- of the Royal Family, his place on the Casa Real website is respected, along with kings Felipe and Letizia, princess Leonor, Infanta Sofia and Queen Sofia. But since that day, since the funeral for his sister the Infanta Pilar in the El Escorial Monastery, not a single movement in the place where Don Juan Carlos’s historical speeches, images and acts are stored. The honorary title of king is the only privilege he enjoys today. And he will enjoy.
In Zarzuela they remain silent and hold their breath in the face of the new storm that is approaching. The judicial file of the three cases against the emeritus, after the Prosecutor’s Office concluded that there are no elements to file a complaint against him in the Supreme Court, is a relief for Felipe VI. But it opens a new scenario not without questions. Some of them will be clarified this coming week, when Don Juan Carlos’s lawyer, Javier Sánchez-Junco, announces the “decisions” that the king emeritus may take. He will do so once he travels to Abu Dhabi, where Juan Carlos I established his residence in August 2020, and personally transfers the writings that exonerate him from all open lines of investigation, despite verifying numerous irregularities.
The prosecutors of the high court have found it impossible to prosecute these illegalities because some were committed when he was inviolable -before his abdication in June 2014-; because the tax regularizations that he presented in December 2020 -of 678,000 euros- and February 2021 -of 4.4 million- free him from the crime against the Treasury or because there is no evidence to support his relationship with the fortune discovered in tax havens or of to receive commissions in Saudi Arabia.
Zarzuela Decision
Once the judicial front is closed, that of the thorny return of the emeritus king to Spain is opened, a matter that, they insist from Moncloa, concerns only Zarzuela; It must be Don Felipe, aware that prolonging the stay in Abu Dhabi much longer does not solve things either, who manages with his father the when and how of his return to Spain. “It will never be a good time. So the less dilated, the better.” It is the response given by a close friend to Don Juan Carlos who knows that the emeritus’s desire to return to his country, to be able to reunite with his friends, receive visits from his daughters and grandchildren, collides head-on with the possible damage to his reputation. that he can do to the Crown, to his son, for whom he “feels true devotion.”
And so he left it in writing both in his abdication speech and when he later announced, in May 2019, that he would abandon all institutional activity or, more recently, when he communicated by letter, on August 3, 2020, that he was moving outside of Spain.
In December of last year, Don Juan Carlos reappeared to attend the match between Rafael Nadal and Andy Murray in Abu Dhabi.
Don Juan Carlos did not suspect then that what his entourage described and still describes as “a forced exile” was going to last 18 months. He left with the idea of returning four months later, at Christmas. But neither those nor the following. Now, when he is already planning his return, the question that arises is where he will set up his residence. “In Zarzuela, which is what he would want, no,” replies a member of the Spanish nobility bluntly.
Moreover, the option that gains more strength every day is that he does not establish his permanent residence in Spain, that when he visits the country of which he was head of state for four decades, he stays in the houses of friends. And his appearances will be sporadic, out of prudence and out of respect for Felipe VI.
The possibility that it occupies a National Heritage building has long been ruled out. It was the option that was considered at the end of 2020, with Carmen Calvo then in the vice presidency of the Government. But over the months, Moncloa has put himself in profile and now says, whenever the occasion requires it, that Zarzuela alone is the one who has to face this crisis. An image crisis that will be greater or less depending on the life that Don Juan Carlos decides to lead in Spain.
Haggle in Sanxenxo
The emeritus king would do his son a disservice if he is seen, for example, sailing around Sanxenxo. It is not an example in the figurative sense, it is his purpose for this coming June, when the Rogue 500, the sailboat in which his close friend Pedro Campos sails and captains, defends the title of world champion that he achieved in the World Cup from Vancouver in 2017 and revalidated in the Finnish waters of Hanko in 2019.
Already in his day, when everything pointed to Anticorruption shelving the cases against the emeritus, Pedro Sánchez assured that Juan Carlos I would have to give explanations. “It would be convenient for King Juan Carlos to say, effectively, what his opinion is about all these facts that are disturbing information and that in the end undermine the confidence of the Spanish people in all institutions,” he said in an interview on TVE in October 2021 The government spokeswoman, Isabel Rodríguez, spoke in a similar vein this week.
The environment of the emeritus, however, believes that he will not. They say that even today he does not have the feeling of having done anything wrong, that his only concern is to return to Spain after 18 months in Abu Dhabi in which he has hardly been seen. Only a few photographs form the graphic testimony of his stay in the United Arab Emirates, some of them spread to deny rumors about his state of health.