- Royal House King Juan Carlos retires with the challenge of not putting the crown in any new trouble
- Opinion: Don Juan Carlos will always be King
This Tuesday, June 2, marks one year of that bullfight in Aranjuez where King Juan Carlos (82) cut his institutional ponytail , withdrawing from official life through the back door. There was no pomp or tributes, just a long applause in the lines. A very low-key goodbye for the monarch who drove the truck of the transition to democracy, -as he defines himself- where they highlighted the absences of King Felipe, Doña Letizia and her daughters, and also of Queen Sofía, who left to Greece to celebrate the 79th birthday of his brother Constantine.
Only the Infanta Elena, the girl with her eyes , Froilán and her sister Doña Pilar, who died this past January, with her daughter Simoneta accompanied him in the box .
Days before, on May 27, Don Juan Carlos had announced his unexpected decision, unknown to many of his relatives, in a letter addressed to Don Felipe. "Today I express my will and desire to take this step and stop developing institutional activities from June 2. I make this decision from the great affection and pride of the father that I feel for you, with my loyalty always. A great hug your father ", he was saying goodbye.
This year, as a retired person, has probably been one of the most bitter of his life, especially due to the rejection that his son Don Felipe carried out on March 15, when in a harsh statement he renounced his father's inheritance and everything non-transparent money, also stripping him of his allocation of 194,232 euros.
It was after it was published that the Swiss prosecution investigated the origin of a hundred million dollar income made by the Saudi monarchy to the Lucum foundation, allegedly linked to Don Juan Carlos, where King Felipe also appeared as a beneficiary without his knowledge . Something that, according to Zarzuela's statement, the monarch found out in April 2019, and led him to resign ipso facto before a notary to all parental inheritance, which surely accelerated the retirement of Don Juan Carlos a month and a half later.
To the painful breakup with her son, in the summer of 2019, she added a serious health setback, with that delicate heart intervention on August 25 at the Quirón clinic in Madrid, where they implanted a triple aortocoronary bypass . After a week in hospital, the convalescence was long, especially since the organism of the elderly monarch, who has undergone 17 surgeries , is very deteriorated and suffers from serious mobility problems.
Again, on January 8, 2020, fate hit him hard again with the death of Infanta Pilar, as a result of colon cancer diagnosed in February, a setback difficult for Don Juan Carlos to overcome , since his older sister was his great support and confident.
When he left the Ruber clinic, where he died, after giving him his last goodbye, he was sunk, so much so that he could barely stand up and between an escort and Queen Sofia herself they had to help her get into the car. Precisely his approach to Doña Sofía, with whom he has filed rough edges, has been one of the few positive data of this fateful year. They have begun to behave almost like a normal marriage, as they have been seen traveling as a family , having lunch with friends and even sharing a few days in the summer in Marivent , something that had not happened since the abdication of the emeritus.
Even in July Doña Sofia accompanied him on a regatta to Sanxenxo, something unprecedented, since the town of Pontevedra has become his "sanctuary" where he can still enjoy one of the few passions that remain, sailing, in a class 6m adapted boat its poor mobility. Something that gave him another of his great joys in 2019 when he conquered the world championship in Finland in August.
A stimulus that has also collapsed following the declaration of the coronavirus pandemic, which has forced Don Juan Carlos to confine himself since March to his rooms in Zarzuela , in the midst of a crisis with his son Don Felipe, isolated from his friends, and without possibility of enjoying their hobbies , such as traveling, going to a restaurant, or enjoying a bullfight. But above all, escaping to sail to Sanxenxo, his paradise, where people still stop him to ask for selfies , and protected by his court of racing friends, headed by his intimate Pedro Campos, in whose chalet he stays, he is still El Rey .
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