The British Times said that the life of former Spanish King Juan Carlos, which began in exile, may also end in him after he left the country yesterday under pressure from the street because of his involvement in financial corruption scandals by "dumping" his son, King Felipe VI.
The newspaper stated that the decision to leave was a tacit admission by Juan Carlos that the monarchy in Spain was so damaged that its long-term survival is now in doubt.
She confirmed that Juan Carlos, by choosing to live abroad, followed in the footsteps of his grandfather Alfonso XIII, who also chose exile after abdication in 1931.
And you see that the question marks surrounding the former king's financial dealings will not disappear. In the past few months, a series of allegations linked him to millions of dollars in secret accounts abroad.
Gifts and donations
He is also under investigation by the Swiss Public Prosecutor regarding a donation of $ 1.9 million, suspected to have been received from Bahrain's King Hamad bin Isa bin Salman Al Khalifa, "as a gift" in order to polish the image of Bahrain - known to be a violation of human rights - according to the newspaper "El Mundo". (El Mundo) Spanish.
This amount was transferred to the same account, which is also suspected of receiving another donation of $ 100 million from Saudi Arabia in exchange for mediating a deal to construct the train line linking Mecca and Medina, from which he spent about $ 76 million on his mistress.
The British newspaper confirms that the current king Felipe VI has tried hard to distance himself from the growing scandals of his father by cutting the royal salary that was reserved for his father and announcing that he would give up his personal share in the inheritance.
These developments are one of the last scandals that have rocked the royal family in Spain in recent years. In 2014, Juan Carlos was forced to step down after a public anger that followed his participation two years earlier in a fishing trip in Botswana, highlighting his lavish lifestyle at a time when the country was Flooded by financial crisis and high unemployment.
King Felipe's brother-in-law, Inaki Ordangarin, was also sentenced to nearly six years in prison on charges of tax fraud and embezzlement. Princess Christina, the sister of King Felipe, who lives in Switzerland, was acquitted of charges also related to tax fraud.
The Times notes that these successive scandals have rekindled the old old dispute over property in a European country characterized by the long tradition of its nineteenth-century republican traditions and the pre-civil war of 1930.
Discard divisions
She adds that Juan Carlos ignored these divisions, given his pivotal role during the seventies in the transition from dictatorship to democracy, as he was chosen as successor to General Franco, and supervised the development of a new constitution that limits the powers of the king and establishes a British-style monarchy.
Juan Carlos strengthened people's respect for him in 1981 when he appeared on television to counter a coup attempt by dissident officers who hoped to topple the civilian government. Since then, it has become almost customary in Spain that popular loyalty is loyal to Carlos and not to property.
As for today - the newspaper sees - only about half of the Spanish people support the monarchy, and the recent scandals came at a time when the 1978 constitution was not subjected to any real test due to the preoccupation with the secessionist endeavors of the Catalonia region and the state of political fragmentation, as the two main parties in the country support The monarchy, while Bodemos - the radical left-wing Republican Party - is a member of the ruling coalition.
She concludes that, in light of the difficult circumstances that Spain is currently going through, the constitutional monarchy system remains a source of stability and the promotion of national unity, but - as has been shown repeatedly by Queen Elizabeth II of Britain - this stability is not only a product of constitutional arrangements, but is also linked to the person sitting on Throne, and this is a lesson you forget "on its own responsibility" the Spanish monarchy.