MADRID (Reuters) -Spain’s former king Juan Carlos will publish his memoirs by year end in an unprecedented move by a Spanish monarch, publishing house Planeta said on Monday.
Once revered for his role in Spain’s transition to democracy, Juan Carlos was forced to abdicate in 2014 following a series of scandals that included an affair with Danish national Corinna zu Sayn-Wittgenstein-Sayn and the shooting of an elephant in Botswana. He is now seen as a liability for his son, King Felipe.
Spanish prosecutors investigated allegations of fraud laid against the former king in Spain and Switzerland, but dropped the probe due to insufficient evidence and the statute of limitations.
The former king’s lawyer said at the time that prosecutors had failed to prove the existence of any wrongdoing or criminal behaviour.
“Reconciliation,” written in first person, aims to highlight his fundamental contributions to the success of Spain’s young democracy during his almost 40-year reign, overshadowed by his self-imposed exile in Abu Dhabi and some of his own mistakes, the publisher said.
“My father always advised me not to write my memoirs. Kings do not confess. And certainly not publicly. Their secrets remain buried in the shadows of palaces. Why am I disobeying him today? Why have I changed my mind? Because I feel that my history is being stolen from me,” Planeta quoted the former king as saying.
The 87-year-old ex-monarch moved to Abu Dhabi in 2020 and has not participated in any official act with the Spanish royal family since. He only returns to Spain for short visits, mainly to sail his yacht, Bribon – Spanish for “rascal” – on its northwestern coast.
The memoirs will tell in detail the private side of a public life, Planeta said, in a book “rich in anecdotes that do not shy away from the most significant episodes of our recent history, nor from the joys and sorrows of his intimate and personal life.”
(Reporting by Emma Pinedo, editing by Aislinn Laing and Aidan Lewis)
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