In exile for almost two years in the United Arab Emirates after accusations of embezzlement, the ex-king Juan Carlos I arrived Thursday evening in Spain, where this first visit of a few days arouses much criticism.
The former monarch’s plane, a private jet from Abu Dhabi, landed shortly after 7:00 p.m. at the small airport in Vigo, Galicia, northwestern Spain, and Juan Carlos I is slowly getting there lowered with the help of a cane, before being welcomed on the tarmac by his eldest daughter, the Infanta Elena.
Many media and curious people had made the trip to try to see behind the fences of the airport the ex-king, 84 years old, who has not set foot in Spain since August 2020 and whose return has spill a lot of ink.
A undermined image
Dressed in a navy blue jacket and beige pants, Juan Carlos I then went to Sanxenxo, where he will attend a regatta this weekend in which the “Bribon”, a sailboat with which he was champion, will participate. of the world in 2017.
On his arrival in the city, the former sovereign greeted from the car the crowd gathered in front of the house where he will be staying, and raised his thumb to the sky to signify that he was well.
While Juan Carlos I saw the judicial investigations against him dismissed in March, the revelations about the opaque origin of his fortune have definitively undermined the image of this figure adored for decades for having led Spain’s democratic transition after the death of dictator Franco in 1975.
A visit to Madrid to see his son
He will then travel to Madrid on Monday to see his son, King Felipe VI, and his wife Sofia, before leaving the same day for Abu Dhabi “where he has established his permanent and stable residence”, insisted Wednesday. evening the palace. Before ensuring that Juan Carlos, who now intends to return “regularly to Spain” to see “his family and friends”, will always stay “in a private place of residence”.
According to the Spanish media, the government of the socialist Pedro Sánchez was, in fact, fiercely opposed to the fact that he could be accommodated in the Zarzuela Palace, the official residence of the sovereign, who is the head of state.
Member of the ruling coalition, the radical left party Podemos fired red balls at the former sovereign. “Anyone returning to our country with the history of King Juan Carlos I would be arrested at the border and brought to justice,” he denounced Thursday on Twitter.
A fortune of opaque origin
The ex-king, who abdicated in 2014 amid scandals, left Spain in August 2020 for Abu Dhabi after increasingly compromising revelations about his lifestyle and the opaque origin of his fortune.
He then explained that he wanted to “facilitate” Felipe VI “the exercise” of his functions in the face of “the public consequences of certain past events in (his) private life”.
Unable to prosecute him “because of the insufficiency of incriminating evidence, the prescription of offenses and the immunity” from which he benefited as head of state until 2014, the Spanish prosecutor’s office had closed in March the three investigations targeting him for suspicion of corruption or money laundering. He had, however, highlighted the “tax irregularities” of which the former king had been guilty and which led him to carry out two tax adjustments for more than 5 million euros.