efore dawn

on Friday, April 13, 2012, King Juan Carlos

of Spain took a fall while on an elephant-
hunting safari in Botswana and was im-
mediately flown home to Madrid, where
he underwent emergency hip-replacement
surgery the next morning. Were it not for
the injury, His Majesty's African adven
ture would have no doubt remained a se-
cret, as had almost everything to do with
his private life since he took the throne,
in 1975, upon the death of Generalissimo
Francisco Franco, the long-ruling dicta-
tor who had arranged for the restoration
of the monarchy. Instead, the 75-year-old
King-long accustomed to stratospheric
popularity ratings and deferential treat-
ment from the press for his role in secur-
ing Spain's democracy-was confronted
with an avalanche of scathing criticism
"The spectacle of a monarch hunting
elephants in Africa while the economic
crisis in our country causes so many prob
lems for Spaniards transmits an image
of indifference and frivolity," thundered
1 Mundo, Spain's leading
newspaper. The countr y' s largest paper,
1 Pais, calculated that a luxury safari
like the King's would cost nearly $60,000
(including $15,000 for a permit to kill an
elephant)-twice the average
111 a through the worst
in Europe s
Nearly every Spanish newspaper, TV
channel , and online news site ran the
now infamous photograph of Juan Car
los standing proudly in front of a dead el
ephant , which he had killed on a previous
undisclosed big-game shooL. Compound-
ing the embarrassment, four days before
the King's fall , his 13-year-old grand-
son-the son of his older daughter-had
shot himself in the foot during target prac
tice at one of the royal family's country
houses, and police were investigating the
incident because in Spain the use of fire-
arms by those under the age of 14 is illegal
This in turn had allowed the press to bring
up a family tragedy that had occurred 56
years earlier, when Juan Carlos, then 18,
accidentally shot and killed his 14-year-old
brother, Alfonso
It soon came out that the King's hunt-
ing party had included Princess Corin
na zu Sayn-Wittgenstein, a glamorous ,
46-year-old, twice-divorced German
businesswoman based in Monaco, and
that she had flown with him on the plane
of Mohamed Eyad Kayali , a Syrian-born
Saudi deal-maker, who paid for the safari
Although denied any
"improper relationship" with the King, it
was reported that Queen Sofia, who had
flown to Athens Friday, to spend Greek
Orthodox Easter with her brother, former
king was informed of her
husband's fall upon her arrival there, and
decided to stick to her plan lo return to
Madrid on Monday
The first call for the King to step down
in favor of his son, Crown Prince Felipe,
came that weekend, when Tomas Gomez,
Madrid's regional Socialist Party leader,
told the press, "The moment has arrived
for the head of state to decide between
his obligations and public responsibilities
and an abdication that would allow him
to enjoy a different life." Such a suggestion
would have been unheard of a week ear-
lier, and it shocked most Spaniards. Three
days later stunned again. Leav
ing the hospital on crutches, Juan Carlos
addressed the waiting journalists and TV
crews with a statement about the ill-timed
safari. "I am very sorry," he said. "I made
a mistake. It won't happen again."
From Bad to Worse
for the King,
the Botswana fiasco fol-
lowed by only a few months
another messy royal scan-
da!. In November 2011 ,
the Spanish people learned
that Ii\aki the husband of the
King's younger daughter, Infanta Cristina,
was under investigation for allegedly embez-
zling millions of euros from his nonprofit
sports foundation, the Noos Institute. A
former Olympic handball champion, Urdan
garin, who had been given the title Duque de
Palma de Mallorca upon marrying Cristina,
in 1997, denied all charges. Nevertheless, the
royal household announced that Urdangarin
would not participate in official family func-
tions while under investigation, and in his an
nual Christmas address Juan Carlos made a
point of stating, "Justice is for everyone."
On December 28, the royal household
published for the first time its earnings and
expenses. In the King had received
close to $400,000 from the slate, almost
evenly divided between salary and ex-
penses; he paid 40 percent income tax on
his salary. Crown Prince Felipe received
nearly $200,000, and the royal women
Queen Sofia, the lnfantas Elena and Cris
tina, and Felipe's wife, Princess Letizia
shared some $500,000. The total budget
for the royal household, including a staff
of about 500, was approximately $1 1.34
a relatively modest sum compared
with other European monarchies
Yet questions remained as to how Juan
Carlos had amassed a personal fortune
said to be about $2 billion. And the royal
lurch toward openness would prove futile
as developments in the Noos imbroglio
threatened to ensnare the King, and as the
press dug deeper into his private affairs
In February 2012, Urdangarin testified
for the first time before Judge Jose Castro,
the Majorca magistrate presiding over the
Noos case. He admitted under questioning
that he had defied an order from his father-
in-law in 2006 lo disassociate himself en-
tirely from the Noos Institute. Though he
resigned as president, he
years to be involved in its activities. His les-
timony raised new questions concerning
LOWOF 54 PERCENT.
A Y N A V 0 3
2013
the King; for example, if he knew of shady
business at Noos, why didn't he inform the
authorities?
Meanwhile, in a book titled The Solitude of
fhe Queen, Spanish author Pilar Eyre called
the King a serial womanizer and alleged that
he had even made a Princess Diana
while she and Prince vacatIon
ing on King Constantine's yacht with the
Spanish and Greek royal families. Within
weeks of the monarch's apology for the Bo
tswana Spanish Vanity Fail' caused a
sensation by putting on the
June 2012 cover as "The Friend
of the King." Lourdes Garzon, the editor in
chief, told me, "Everyone more or
about this woman, but it was impossi
ble to find anything written about her
Because to write about the monarchy
was the biggest taboo in our society."
worse
The Palace announced the King
and Queen not be
golden In
Torres,
Urdangarin's former business partner,
testified that the King's son-in-law
never made a move without Palace
approval, and that his wife, Cristina,
as an officer of the Noos Institute,
was involved in the running of it. To
support his claims, Torres submitted
more than 200 e-mails to the court. They
revealed that , as early as June 2004, the
King had asked Sayn-Wittgenstein to help
a newjob, which suggested
that her role in royal matters was even larger
than suspected. When arrived
at the Palma de Mallorca courthouse, he
was taunted by protesters shouting, "Down
with the monarchy! Down with corruption!"
In sworn testimony he insisted, "The royal
family did not give its opinion on, advise or
authorize the activities of Noos." Several
later, however, Judge Castro subpoe
naed lnfanta Cristina-the first time in his
tory that a member ofthe royal family had
been ordered to appear in court
On March 3, Juan Carlos returned to
the hospital for back surgery, his fourth
operation in less than a year. The previous
week Sayn-Wittgenstein had given an in
terview to 1 Mundo. She told investigative
reporter Ana Romero that she had met the
King nine years earlier, at a shooting party
at the Duke of Westminster's estate in
England, and that they had become "close
friends." She further confided that she had
performed "sensitive and confidential" as
signments for the Spanish government ,
"These were specific
S matters and I helped for the good of t
OCTOBU 2013
National Intelli
gence Center, had
been questioned
bya parliamentary
committee "prob
ing whether Corinna zu Sayn-Wittgenstein
had ever benefited from a Spanish secu
rity detail or received any payments from {.
the state as a lobbyist for Spanish firms ...
abroad." In early April , EI Mundo alleged
that Juan Carlos had secreted in Swiss
accounts millions of dollars that he had
inherited from his father, Don Juan de
Borbon, who had lived in exile during the
Franco years (and would have been king
had the Generalissimo not chosen his son
as his successor instead)
All this was happening as increasingly
harsh austerity measures imposed by the
conservative government of Prime Min-
ister Mariano Rajoy and an epidemic of
political-corruption scandals had Span-
iards feeling beleaguered and angry. With
Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands an-
nouncing her abdication in favor of her
son in January, and an ailing Pope Bene-
dict XVI resigning in February, the idea
of an ill and embattled Juan Carlos giving
up his throne suddenly seemed plausible
By mid-April , when I first traveled to Ma-
drid to explore the situation for Mlnity Fail;
the King hadn't been seen in public for
six weeks, his approval rating had plum-
meted below 50 percent-both the Queen
and Prince Felipe were polling higher-and
talk of abdication had reached a fevel
pitch across all of Europe. SPAIN'S KING
JUAN CARLOS IS ENGULFED IN SCANDAL,
declared The Guardian of London. Ger
many's Der went further: IS IT TIME
FOR SPAIN TO DISSOLVE THE MONARCHY?
The Defense Team
f the King leaves, it would be a
disaster. He's the center of every-
thing. It's not only that we love
him, we need him." So said
Blanca Martinez de Irujo, a grande
dame ofthe Spanish aristocracy, as
she passed me a plate of finger
in her Madrid apartment She and her sis
ter, Victoria, Marquesa de Tamarit,
had agreed, reluctantly, to talk about Juan
Carlos, who is both their friend and relative
"We have known him since he was a young
boy in short pants," said the marquesa
A full-length portrait of Queen Isabella 11,
the great-greagrandmother of Juan Carlos
and the sisters, hung over the mantelpiece
The ladies' mother was a princess of the
Borbon dynasty, which has produced Span-
ish monarchs since 1700 and French kings
from the 16th to the 19th century. Their
grandfather the Count of
a prime minister under King Alfonso XIIl,
the last Borbon ruler before the monarchy
was replaced, in 1931, by the Second Spanish
Republic, which in turn was vanquished by
Franco in the Spanish Civil War of 1936-39
"I think the best thing we have in Spain
is the King," conti.nued the Marquesa de
"We don't have to criticize him
We-all of us who are not Communists
VANITY ,
/
: ,
have to help him. He has done may
be, that people can think are not so good
But he's a human being."
Former king Simeon 11 of Bulgaria, who
was exiled as a boy after the Communist
takeover of his country, in 1946, more or less
grew up with Juan Spain granted
his family asylum in 1951. He told me that ab-
dication had suddenly become a
which he was not happy about. "One has to
put the King's whole
life in context and I _ I'

not focus on
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that are accidental -{
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"And looking on the
balance at what the monarchy itself and the
King personally have contributed to Spain's
contemporary history, I would think it's ab
surd to blow up these unpleasant situations
The definition of monarchy is a lifetime
job. It's a dedication. All ofa sudden,
because the King has had four op-
eratlons 111 a he's got to abdicate?
Give me a break."
Even one of Juan Carlos's toughest
critics, Pedro 1. Ramirez, the editor
in chief of 1 Mundo, the paper that
has been most aggressive in pursuing
the royal scandals, had nice things
to say about him. Ramirez told me
of an exchange he had had with Juan
Carlos in 1990, after being fired from
his previous job as editor of Diario 16
because the King had complained to
the owner about stories he didn't like
''The King said, I know you know that
Itold your boss to get rid of you. But I
didn't think he was going to be such an
asshole as to accept my suggestion,'''
Ramirez recalled. "Ithought. O.K., this
is Juan Carlos, a guy who always tries to
be everyone. I would not say
he's intelligent. He is shrewd like a fox
Well. now he is an old man with a lot of
health problems and personal problems
But I think, on the whole. he has been a
great king."
hat was clearly the consen-
sus among Madrid's po
litical, media, and society
circles. Laurence Debray,
the author of an unauthor
ized French biography, Juan
d'Espagne. called the King "a real
political animal ," who deserved enormous
credit for declining to become the absolute
monarch Franco had set him up to be, and
for refusing to go along with the attempted
coup staged in his name by right-wing mili-
tary officers in 1981. "That was the moment
when he really CONTINUED ON PAGE 3(,)
312 I FA I R

J
?
I ,

station, which was being blasted from the rock
The company doing
the work was Skanska, a big player in heavy
construction worldwide. Its project boss was
a vetemn underground engineer named Gary
Almeraris. Much of the being torn
up for the excavation of the future station
entrances, and years of disruption
some of the neighbors were unhappy. We
climbed down a series of stairs and ladders
a dank void 938 feet long by 65 feel high,
loud with the clatter of hammers and drills
and the roar of diesel engines. Perhaps 200
men were at of the famous
Sandhogs union, Local 147-many of them
clustered around machinery and preparing
yet another round of blasting. At either
end stood the twin tunnels ofthe new subway
itself, still trackless but already fully bored
and lined. A sign read, WELCOME TO THUN-
DERDOME. Two giant ventilation shafts rose
to fan houses far above. An
ciliary chambers and angled ramps led
directions. The ground underfoot was
rough, and in places slick and thick with mud
In March of this about 10 blocks
north, a Second Avenue worker had sunk up
to his chest in a of similar mud, and
it had required four hours and more than 150
to pull him out
Almeraris led through the cavern, ex-
plaining the process unfolding. I heard every
other sentence at best. A subway man had
warned me about the front-end loaders ma-
around. He said, "The driver won't
even know he ran you that a pebble
or a man? He's got 40 tons of rock in his buck-
et. Ifyou see him coming, you gotta get out
of the way."
Back aboveground, Horodniceanu looked
around at the construction zone and brou1!ht
up the subject of neighborhood disruption
He said, "People do not like surprises unless
it comes out of a cake-and maybe is naked
have to work with people so they be
come your allies. When you
can't the fuck away.' You have to lis
ten to what they say, and say,O.K., help me to
help you. We want to get out ofhere as soon as
possible. We have to build. Ifyou've gOI good
ideas, r'lI listen to you. Tell me what I can do.'"
"And do they have good ideas?"
"No. Well, sometimes a few of them do
Like there's no need to blast past eight P.M. at
night, because there is other work you can do
So we listen to them. But we don't stop work."
No, they don't stop work. The work never
stops. Underground, it hasn't stopped in
ades-or, really, in two centuries. Every day
the city beneath the city grows and deepens,
an expanding universe down every entrance
and
FROM THE ARCHIVE
For stories, visit ,\ReIl IVE
New Orleans and the great deluge
(DO l/gIlls ./lIll e: wo6)
Conslructing the George
./llly l!Jjo)
'Inside the underground world oflhe Large
Hadron Collider (KurIAllderse: ll. .IwllI ar:. r WIO)
King Juan Carlos
FROM rAGE 312 wonhiscrown,"
she said. "To my mind, he is one of the
greatest leaders of the 20th century."
"King Juan Carlos is really the founding
father of Spanish democracy," noted his-
torian Charles Powell. "That's why people
feel this could have massive political conse-
quences," he added, to the King's
present predicament. "If this goes wrong for
him, it isn't just the head of state who's in
trouble; the whole political system will be
called into question. Some people argue that
it's high time, that the model that was created
in the 1970s is exhausted, that political institu-
tions-including the monarchy itself-need to
be revisited in a fundamental way."
One afternoon in Madrid, I had drinks at
the Ritz with Luis Venegas, the editor of the
hip fashion magazine and his friend
Leo Rydell Jost, a design student. "It 's true
King Juan Carlos did many things to assure
that democracy came to the country," said
Venegas, "but more than 30 years have passed
since then." Rydell Jost added, "With every
thing that has happened recently, you see the
OCTOBER 2013
whole monarchy thing as a joke. Most people
under 30 want a republic."
Detractors of the monarchy were gener-
ally reluctant to talk. One disillusioned baby-
boomer royalist , however, had a lot to say
''This King has had the biggest red carpet in
the world forever. No leader has ever gotten
such an amount of protection, adoration, and
schmoozing. And he took it all the way
with it. You cannot feel sorry for him. He did
it to himself. He's like a spoiled brat who has
had everything, and one day it's taken away."
The King's Lady Friend
the King it's been like a bomb to his
1.' brain," said the Condesa de Toreno, a
prominent Madrid hostess. "Imagine, his ill-
ness and then this thing of-let's call it fa petite
The Condesa was obviously referring
to Princess Corinna zu Sayn-Wittgenstein
Virtually everyone I talked to for this arti-
cle seemed to take it for granted that the King
and Sayn-Wittgenstein have had a romantic
relationship, but aim>n>ost no one to
be
very much in one
of s
be, because she's very beautiful." A
jet-setter was less kind: "She's a
bad-news girl. And he's such an old fool. She
knows exactly how to play him."
When Sayn-Wittgenstein learned that I
writing about she offered a mu-
tual friend to give me an interview. "I'm doing
O.K.," she told me at the start of our conversa-
tion in June. "I'm trying to ride out the storm."
In her rapid, straightforward she
hardly sounded like the cunning femme fatale
the has made her out to be. ("She's not
a bimbo," said a Spanish source. "If she was a
bimbo, we wouldn't have such a problem.")
I asked her when she had last been in Spain
Not since December last year, and I'm not
planning on going back, because that would
not be very appropriate smart." Does
she keep in touch with the King? "Yes. We are
close friends. Some people don't understand
that things can happen at a certain point in
time, and then they end, but the friendship
doesn't end. He is now an elderly gentleman
struggling with his health, and I think he needs
all the support he can get. . .. People are ex-
pecting something big to happen,
the other. Nothing is going to happen, minus
he can't go hunting and I won't go to Spain. He
keeps in touch. He caUs my children on a
Iy basis to see how they're doing. He behaves
like you and I would behave with a friend."
When she met the King with the Duke of
Westminster in 2004, she had recently bro
ken with her second husband, Prince Casimir
zu Sayn-Wittgenstein-Sayn, whom she had
married four years earlier. ("His family was
aghast," said the jet-setter.) Her father, the
Danish-born Finn Bonning Larsen, was
the European director of Varig, the Brazilian
national her mother, Ingrid Sauer, was
Frankfurt, where Corinna was born on
January 28, 1964. She told me that
up between Frankfurt and Rio de Janeiro
and attended girls' schools in Germany and
Switzerland. After the Uni-
versity of Geneva, in 1987, she went
for L'Oreal in Paris. That led to a job with
Compagnie Generale des Eaux, the utilities
and-construction giant, she said, where she did
public relations for the opening of La Grande
Arche in La Defense, in Paris, an event attend
3 6 3 A Y N A V
King Juan Carlos
ed by Franyois M Margaret Thatch-
er, and Helmut Kohl. "And that's largely what
I do today. I manage relationships on a long-
term basis between institutions, government
institutions, or large corporate
She met her first husband, Philip Ad
kins, a graduate of Columbia and Harvard,
in Paris in 1989; they married the following
year and set up house in London.
divorced three years later, but they remain
the closest of friends and business partners
In fact , Adkins was on the safari in Botswa-
na, as was Corinna's IO-year-old son from
her marriage to Sayn-Wittgenstein. "I was in
my tent with my son," she told me. "My ex-
husband was in his tent , and the King was in
his tent. There was no hanky-panky."

on a when
he called and asked her to arrange the May
2004 honeymoon trip of Prince Felipe and
Princess Letizia to Jordan, Thailand, and Fiji
She had been working the past four years at
Boss & Co. , the London bespoke gun-makers,
organizing hunts for high-profile clients. Ac
cording to Spanish Vanity Fail; she put to-
gether two safaris in Mozambique for the
King, in 2004 and 2005, and on the first was
"by his side all the time." Since then, a royal
insider said, she has been a regular guest on
the partridge-shooting Juan Carlos
hosts every spring at his country estate, south
of Madrid. that person, "The
King is still in her."
Boris Izaguirre, a popular young TV per-
sonality in Madrid, recalled that the rumors
about the King's girlfriend started four or five
years ago: "Apparently, Corinna took the man-
icurist that all the big Madrid ladies use on
trips with the King, and people started asking,
Who is this German woman who travels with
the King?' Then came the stories about the
house in the El Pardo palace compound. The
King refurbished it, and people said that it was
Corinna's and that he was always there
with her and her kids. It has two pools-one
indoor-and 1
published all of these things, and questions
were asked in parliament about who paid for
the refurbishment. The royal household replied
that the house was used for foreign guests."
More seriously, the press began w ask why
Sayn-Wittgenstein-who left Boss & Co. in
2006 lO start her own consulting firm, Apol-
Ionia the King on
trips to foreign countries,
Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and the United Arab
Emirates. Suspicions were raised afler the Ho-
tswana story broke, when 1 Mundo reponed
that Mohamed Eyad Kayali, the King and
Corinna's safari host , was the "right-hand
man" of Prince Salman bin Abdulaziz AI
A Y N A V 4 6 3
Saud, the Saudi defense minister, who had
the $9 billion deal for a consortium
of Spanish companies to build the
railway Mecca and Medina
"In the Corinna affair, there are two as
pects," said Pedro Ramirez. "One is the per-
sonal relationship. I would say in Spain this is
not important, that the King has a lover or a
very close friend. What is embarrassing in the
affair is the financial implications." A few
before I interviewed Ramirez, his newspaper
had linked to the Saudi
Fund, which had been
dedicated at the EI Pardo palace in 2007 by
KmgJuan Carlos and ofSaudi
Arabia. "Spanish companies committed $200
million, but the fund collapsed when the Sau-
dis didn't come through with their $800 mil-
lion," Ramirez explained. "The only money
spent was $15 million, which went to the fund
managers, Cheyne Capital, who were friends
ofCorinna, who got close to $5 million."
When I asked Sayn-Wittgenstein about
the extent ofher involvement in the
ficial business, she responded firmly, "I have
never done business for the King, or collect-
ed any money on his behalf.... Business in
Spain has been conducted for the last 30 or
40 years in a particular manner.... When-
ever there are large deals for Spanish com
panies in the Middle East, Eastern Europe,
or Latin America, the person that politi-
cians and the community call is the
King, and he makes the calls."
She said that she had had "absolutely noth-
ing to do" with the Saudi high-speed train
deal, that Shahpari Khashoggi, the third ex-
wife of Saudi arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi,
"was the agent for the Spanish side on that."
She also wid me, "Yes, I was involved in the
Saudi-Spanish Infnt.structure Fund, and I was
paid, because I worked for two years giving
advice to the fund manager." She concluded,
"My message is I don't have an agenda, othel
than huge respect for the King and Prince Fe
lipe." Had she met the Queen? "I bumped into
her once, accidentally."
A Tough Life
interviews
family were being declined, but the King
authorized Pepe Fanjul, the Cuban
Americ.m sugar baron, to speak to me on his
behal f. "The King and I became very good
friends back in the when he was still
Prince," said Fanjul. "He is cenainly one of
the most charismatic individuals I've ever met
He's a people person, like Ronald Reagan
Without a doubt he has been Spain's No. I
ambassador to the world, and he has gotten
huge contracts for Spain."
Fanjul lOld me that he had met Corinna
and Casimir zu Sayn-Wittgenstein-Sayn
shortly after they were married, and that he
had come to know her over the years. "We
have mutual social friends, and she was in
volved in the shooting world. I've shot with
her in different pans ofthe world. She's a bril
!iant , hardworking businesswoman. The King
feels it would be unfair if her business were
as she's really an innocent bystander
He considers her lO be a dear and loyal friend,
who has always been very respectful to the roy-
al family." He added, "People think the King
has had a charmed life. I would say it's one of
the hardest lives of anybody I know."
Juan Carlos Alfonso Victor Maria de
Borban y Horb6n-Dos Sicilias was born on
January 5, 1938, the second of four children,
to Don Juan de Borban and Princess Maria
de las Mercedes de Horban-Dos Sicilias. He
is a direct descendant of King Louis XIV of
France from both of his parents, and of En-
gland's Queen Victoria through his father. The
living in exile in Rome during
the Spanish Civil War, but they left
Italy for neutral Switzerland in 1942. When
Juan Carlos his parents settled in Es-
toril, Portugal, leaving at a board
ing school for boys run by Marian fathers. "I
was really very miserable," he later said
In November 1948, according lO Paul Pres-
ton's biography Juan Steering Spain
from Dictatorship to a "tearful
ten-year-old Juan Carlos offby his
tight-lipped parents" as he boarded an over
night train from Portugal to Spain, where, for
the next 27 every aspect ofhis existence
would be overseen by Franco. For Don Juan,
delivering his son to the dictator was the only
way to keep alive the hopes of a Horban resto-
nttion, but for Juan Carlos it meant becoming
something between a pawn and a hostage. He
was sequestered at a country estate near Ma
drid, where a private school was set up for him
and eight boys from the aristocracy and rich
right-wing families. In 1950 the school
located to a former royal palace in San Sebas
where Juan Carlos's brother, Alfonso, and
eight boys of his age joined the student body
In 1955, Juan Carlos, then 17, was moved to
Madrid to prepare for the Military Academy
of Zantgoza. He lived in the Duke de Montel-
lano's mansion, under the watchful eyes of a
general , a a priest from the Opus
Dei, the conservative Catholic movement
"He was not allowed to go out to any-
thing, not even to the theater," said Dona
Blanca Martinez de Irujo, adding that oc-
casionally his riding instructor "would help
him escape" for half an hour to see a girl
Her Dona Victoria, volunteered, "He
always loved our King, and he loved
dancing, especially
On Holy Thursday 1956, while on Easter
va
2013
the Infante Alfonso was cleaning a revolver
with his brOl her, a shot fired hilling his
forehead and killing him in a few minutes."
Subsequent comments, however, from the
boys' mother, Dona Maria, her dressmaker,
and a family friend, suggested that Juan
Carlos had been holding the gun, which he
thought was not loaded. The King has never
denied his responsibility or an expla-
nation, but as Reinaldo Herrera, a Vanity Fail
contributing editor and a longtime acquain
tance ofhis, said, "It marked him for life."
TheMowmgsummerJuanMS
Zaragoza, and then spent a year
each at the national naval and air-force acad
emies. In 1960 he entered the Complutense
University of Madrid, where he studied law,
economics, and taxation. Franco's wife, Dona
Carmen Polo, personally decorated his new
residence, the Palacio de la Zarzuela, a hunt-
ing lodge built in the 17th century for King
Philip IV palace in name only," noted
Pepe of the 20-room villa, where
Juan Carlos and Queen Sofia live to this day.
They were married on May 14, 1962, in
Athens, first in a Catholic cathedral, then
in a Greek Orthodox ceremony (she would
later convert to Catholicism). The wedding
was attended by more than 150 members of
27 royal houses. "It was a marriage of con
venience, and it was largely Queen Frederi-
ca's doing," one friend of the royals told me,
referring to Sofia's mother. But Paul Preston,
among believes the couple were in
love, at least initially. Their three children,
Infanta Cristina, and Prince
Felipe, were born over the next six years
Most importantly, Franco gave his stamp of
approval to the prim and Sofia
On July 22, 1969, Franco officially designated
Juan Carlos as his successor, and the Prince
swore fealty to the Fundamental Principles
of the National Movement, the sole political
party under the dictatorship
The Enlightened Monarch
KM arl
the possible. There
no aborate mass. He
and La Zarzuela r
than into the 2,800-room Royal Palace
And they eschewed the traditional trappings of
a court. In all ofthis Juan Carlos had the sup-
port and encouragement of his had
seen her brother, King Constantine, driven
into exile in 1967
"I think one of the cleverest things Juan
Carlos did avoid the old aristocracy,"
said Charles Powell. ''They thought, Oh, great,
our time is back. But Juan Carlos realized
these people were the kiss of death. They had
been largely responsible for the crash of the
monarchy in 1931. They had isolated Alfonso
XIII from public opinion, from the political
elite, and from the intellectual world."
OCTOBER 2013
In any event, nobody thought Juan would
reign for very long. To everyone's amazement,
however, the Ki ng took charge. Within months
of his coronation he appointed Adolfo Smirez,
one of the few moderate officials of the Na-
tional Movement, as prime minister. In 1977,
Juan Carlos outraged Francoist loyalists by
supporting the ofthe Socialist and
Communist parties
Most significantly, he was instrumental in
the writing ofa new constitution to replace the
one left by Fnmco, which
sion of the authoritarian system in the guise of
an absolute monarchy. Generally referred to
as Spain's Magna Carta, the 1978 constitution
was overwhelmingly approved by the Span-
ish people in a referendum. King Simeon II
recalled visiting Juan Carlos while the new
document being written. "In his room
he had a whole lot of pages strewn on the table
and even on the bed. I said,What on earth is
this?' He told me,This is the draft of the con
stitution.' I noticed there a lot of cross-
outs-litemlly paragraphs. He
the prerogatives I have.' And I said, 'But you
are striking all these prerogatives And
he I don't see why I should have so
many powers.'"
On February 23, 1981 , 200 armed officers
of the Guardia Civil, or fedeml police, led by
Li eutenant Colonel Antonio Tejero, seized
control of the lower house of the Spanish par-
liament. Almost at the same time, Lieutenant
General Jaime Milan del Bosch, a
Francoist, sent tanks into the of Va-
lencia. The rebels announced that
acting in support of the Ki ng, but early the
next morning he went on national TV and de-
nounced them, crown, symbol
ofthe permanence and unity ofthe fatherland,
cannot tolerate actions or attitudes by those
to interrupt by force the democratic
process." Three days later, three million peo
pie marched through Spain's cities in support
of democracy and the King
The following year, Spain elected 40-year-
old Felipe Gonzalez, the son of a livestock
handler from Seville, as its first Socialist head
since the Civil War. He would
be re-elected twice, and over the next 14 years
he and Juan Carlos would form what Charles
Powell called "the most fruitful political part-
nership in 20th-century Spain." By 1986 the
country had joined both the European Eco
nomic Community and The Gonz{lIez
government gave the country free
ucation, a social-security system, and new in-
economy took terro
ist attacks by the Basque-sepamtist
wer
wrote in an e-mail statement. "I have frequent
even having republican I believe
the role of the monarchy to be vital for Spain."

the people seem to
love. "Wh> she people stand p
and applaud said Charles
Powell. It wasn't always that way. Indeed, un-
til Corinna became a household name, the
consensus was that Sofia was cold, distant,
too Germani like her Queen Fred-
erica, the granddaughter of Kaiser Wilhelm II
of Prussia. "She hates she hates
soccer, she hates Aamenco," complained one
Madrid socialite
People admire her for stoically enduring
her husband's some allegedly having
lasted for years. For all intents and purposes,
the King and Queen lead lives. Sofia
is said to spend weeks at a time in London,
visiting King Constantine and Anne
Marie, and she frequently flies to Paris to see
her favorite cousin, Princess Tatiana Radziwill
Close friends said that the King grew tired of
playing host to the former Greek royals for
two months in Majorca.
spinster sister, Princess has at La
Zarzuela since the death of their mother, in
1981. "He fled to get his in-laws,"
said one male friend
Few can find fault with the Queen's tire
of worthy causes, from fight-
ing drug addiction at horne to combating
sex traflicking in Cambodia. She shows up
at almost every opening of her namesake
Reina Sofia art museum and, according to
Charles Powell , "she has an ongoing seminar
program. She will invite academics to serious
debate, at Zarzuela, about the Arab Spring,
for example. She loves classical music. The
King is tone-deaf." Powell added, "I think
she's incredibly brave and resilient, and very
lonely, I would imagine."
Many among the old aristocracy never
the Queen for not
riages between her children and theirs. One
friend said, "She's been
with the children. None of them married cor-
rectly. There's a law in Spain called the Edict
of Carlos III, which forbids the royal family
from marrying outside of royal families. If they
do, they lose their succession rights. For some
reason, it seems to have been forgotten."
The Infantas and Their Spouses
I: de a of the
nobility Soria, who thereupon
became the Duke of Marichalar had
studied economics, but his real interest was
fashion. "He started dressing her up, to the
point where she was competing with Caroline
ofMonaco as the most elegant princess in Eu
rope," said Boris Jaime
quite the dandy with his slicked-back hair, fur
6 3 A Y N A V
King Juan Carlos
coats, and slacks of bracelets.
Antonio CamufJ.as, a Madrid corpomte con
sultam who JulOWS the rOydl "The
guy would ride his Segway down Avenida Ser-
rano, where all the fancy shops are, with his
bodyguards running afler him, which people
sawas Yet the couple seemed
happy and produced a boy and girl, in 1998
and 2000, respectively. But
the same after Jaime suffered a stroke. In
2009 the couple ended their marriage, rnak-
ing Elena child of a reigning Spanish
monarch to divorce. Marichalar lost his royal
title. "He became a black sheep," said Izu-
guirre. However,15 scandal enveloped his for-
mer brother-ill-law, lfiaki Urdangarin, Jaime
came to be seen in a more light
lnfimta
in Atlanta, where he
competing as a member of the Spanish
handball team. They married in 1997 and had
four children over the next eight years. The
son of a wealthy Basque businessman and a
Belgian mother, Urdangarin grew up in Barce-
lona, where he and Cristina settled after their
marriage. The Queen was said LO be very fond
sportsman. "We allloved LJiaki,"
said Antonio he seemed
so perfect and very normal. [naki always made
Infanta happy. He's a great fa-
ther. He cooks. He takes care ofall the help."
Urdangarin retired from professional hand-
ball after the 2000 Summer Olympics, having
earned a degree from Barcelona's elite Escuela
Superior de Administraci6n y Direcci6n de
Empresas was where he met
Diego Torres, an associate professor in the
school's department of policy and business. In
1999, Torres founded a consulting firm, the In
of Applied which Urdan-
garin joined in 2003, whereupon it was recon-
nonprofit foundation and renamed
the Noos Institute (nous Greek word
for "mind"). was president and
vice president , and they were joined
on the five-member board by Cristina, her
royal secretary, Carlos Garcia Revenga, and
Miguel Tejeiro, a relative of Torres's wife,
Ana Maria Tejeiro, who was
her brother, Marco Antonio
The foundation quickly eSlablished
lucrative relationships with the provincial gov-
ernments ofthe Balearic Islands and
which between 2004 and 2006 Noos
no-bid contracts
$7 million, to produce annual sports and tour-
ism "summjts."
Provincial politicians may have been eager
to do busin
A Y N A V 6 6 3
his son-in-law, had secured what she thought
was the perfect position: president of the new
Spanish branch of the multi-national Laureus
Sport for Good Foundation, which provides
outreach programs for needy children and
annual awards to prominent athletes
"They are like the Oscars for sports," Sayn-
Wingenstein told me, explaining that
is supported by the Richemont luxury-goods
group and Mercedes-Benz. Urdangarin's sal-
ary for the part-time job would have started
at $66,000, but he could have earned up to
$260,000 as additional corporate sponsors
came aboard, according to e-mails leaked to
the press. "I was turned
it down," Sayn-Wittgenstein said
whole thing started going wrong in
.I. 2005," said Boris Izaguirre. "Iii.aki and
bought a best part of
Barcelona, Pedralbes, for $8 million, and
people started how they could afford
it." They left the Noos board in 2006, along
with Carlos Garcia That same year
El its first investigative piece about
transactions at the founda-
tion. In 2009 the couple moved to Wash
ington, D.C., where Urdangarin worked for
the international subsidiary ofTelefonica, the
Spanish telecommunications monopoly
They returned to Spain after the scandal
broke, when-as a friend put were
molested by a TV crew in the Whole Foods
Market in Georgetown."
According to the official announcement
from Spain's Anticorruption Bureau, Urdan-
gadn and were under investigation for
suspected misappropriation of public funds,
of official documents, breach of
fiduciary duty, and Documents were
leaked suggesting that Noos grossly over-
billed the Valencia and Balearic Islands
ernments and the excess sums it col-
lected to tax havens in Belize, Luxembourg,
and Andorra. According to The
of this public
to have gone to "a real estate firm jointly op-
erated by Mr. Urdangarin and his wife." This
past February, Diego Torres, embittered by
the royal family's attempts to place most
of the blame on him, testified that, even
ter leaving the board, Urdangarin continued
to make the majority of decisions at Noos. In
the same hearings, Revenga, the foundation's
former treasurer, testified that his role and
Cristina's were largely symbolic. But some of
the that Torres had released seemed
to indicate that Revenga had helped organize
business meetings for Noos. an
nounced that he had dozens more e-mails,
he alleged, showed that the King tried
to help Urdangarin land big contracts. Both
and Torres have denied wrongdo
ing. In July, Urdangarin filed suit against Tor-
res concerning the authenticity ofthe
Infanta due to appear in Judge
Castro's court in late April, but Pedro Hor-
rach, the anti-corruption prosecutor, argued
that there was insufficient evidence to link
her directly to the alleged fraud at N60s, and her
appearance In Maya higher
court suspended the subpoena. Judge Castro
then announced that he investigate
whether Cristina had in tax evasion or
money-laundering
This spring Urdangarin thought he had
a job in Qatar as assistant coach to its new
handball team, but it fell through amid specu-
lation that the King had personally arranged
it with the Emir of Qatar to get his son-in-law
out of the country for a while. The Palace
denied that , saying phone conversations be-
the two monarchs at the time had been
about trade relations. "It 's too bad, because
my cousin Cristina and Iii.aki barely have
an income, as he can't get a job in Spain,"
said Prince Pavlos of Greece. "They're
ing in the middle oftotal chaos in Barcelona,
hounded by journalists and photographers
And it isn't even a an mves-
tigation to create a case. I think if Iii.aki has
done someth he was misguided."
In August, Infanta Cristina and the cou-
pie's four children moved to Geneva,
her longtime employer, Caixa Foundation,
transferred her to coordinate
program with United Nations agencies based
there. Urdangarin will make visits to Switzer-
land while remaining in Barcelona to sell their
house and deal with his problems. Ac-
to
may be indicted in September, which will no
doubt bring about another barrage of daunt-
ing headlines for the royal family
The Crown Prince and His
AH emare mwonwmld crown
Prince Felipe and the he fell in
love with while watching her recite the news
on TV, his wife, Princess Letizia. His Royal
Highness and Ms. Ortiz Rocasolano were
married on May 22, royal
wedding since that of Prince Charles and
Diana, in 1981. the first com
moner in Spanish history to be in line to be
Queen, and the first in that position to have
been divorced. The King, apparently, was not
with his According to
a member of another European royal family,
to his father to ask permission
to with a letter renouncing his
right to the throne in his pocket. And when
his father suggested that he wait a year or so
to make sure that she really was the right girl,
he handed him the letter. Juan Carlos asked
Sofia what they should do. She told him, 'You
have no choice. (fyou don't acquiesce, it will
be the end of the monarchy.'''
Lelizia Oniz Rocasolano was born in
Oviedo, in northern Spain, on September 15,
1972, and raised in a liberal, secular, middle-
class environment. Her father is a journalist
2013
Her mother is a registered nurse and hospital
union organizer whose father was a taxi
er and whose mother is halfFilipino. Letizia's
parents divorced in 1999
When Letizia was 25, she married Alon
so Guerrero, a professor and author. After
earning a journalism degree from the
plutense University ofMadrid and a master's
from the Institute for Audiovisual Journalism
she went to work at a newspaper in
Mexico. Upon returning to Spain, she rapidly
rose to the position of anchorwoman at TVE,
the nel\vork. She covered the
2000 presidential election from Washington,
broadcast live from Ground Zero following
9f ll , and reported from Iraq in the wake of
the American invasion
"Some aristocrats were outraged when
Felipe married Letizia," said a royal observ
er. "They make fun of her behind her back,
but they won't say it publicly, because they're
monarchisls. Letizia it, and she can't
stand them. I think she's in a difficult situa
tion. She is a nervous person, worried, up-
tense and intense."
The crown couple's first child, Infanta Le-
onor, born in 2005, is second in line to the
throne. Their second daughter, Infanta Sofia,
followed in 2007. The family lives in a large
house next door to La Zarzuela that was built
for Felipe before his marriage. According to a
royal insider,
She to
that she is a person her right. For ex
they up She IIl
later, and they willleave
it's a bit But the
look on his face when she behaves like that is
ofdeep affection. He is very protective ofher."
'Tpersonally believed that it would have
.I. been better if Prince Felipe had married
a royal princess," said Ramon
the assistant editor of ABC, the monarchist
daily. "Having said that , and having seen
Princess Letizia act the last nine years, I
think she's done a fantastic job. She's helped
Prince Felipe meet groups of society he
wasn't familiar with, such as people in the
media. And Ilike the fact that when they got
married they started their honeymoon trip
around Spain in a car, which nobody knew
they were going to do. That was something
that came out of her. And thaL's brilliant."
Perez-Maura observed of Felipe, "He's
more like his mother than his father. He
doesn't have the warmth, the charm, that his
father has. He never tries to be the center ofat-
which the King, in does."
"Prince Felipe is perhaps the best-pre-
pared man of his generation in Spain," said
Antonio Camuiias, citing an education that
took him from boarding school in Canada,
through the Aut6noma University of Madrid,
Spain's three military academies, and George
town University's School of Foreign Service
OCTOBER 2013
Carlos
and society editor, is equally high on Princess
Letizia, although he thought it was a joke
when a friend told him that Felipe was mar-
rying an anchorwoman. "Well, he did what
all the other crown princes in Europe are do-
ing-marrying commoners. I now think he
did the right thing. I think she's great. She's
witty and very endearing."
The controversial Letizia has made some
enemies. A book by her cousin David
solano made headlines in April with its claim
that she had had a secret abortion before
she met Felipe. (Her supporters vehemently
disputed this account, viewing act of
treason.) According to another book published
earlier this year, a Hustler in the
COlirt 01the King, Letizia's embattled
blames his troubles on her. "She wanted
to shine and leaked documents to the
reveal Urdangarin's bad moves," wrote
ardo Inda and Esteban who also
alleged that hiaki and Cristina "resented that
they were treated differently at the palace in
comparison" with Felipe and Letizia
"The most important thing about Felipe
and Letizia is that they are not linked in any
to any kind of corruption," said Laurence
Debmy. "They were ambitious enough to stay
away from it all. They cut off any relationship
they had with liiaki and Cristina. Felipe's a
good family man. He doesn't have
He doesn't go hunting. modern. The
younger doesn't care about Franco,
or the Civil War, or the coup. For them, most
of the royal family seems corrupt. They don't
work, and they of money. SO Felipe
is looking better every so is Letizia."
The Royal Road Ahead
King, the
is that Queen Sofia would prefer (0 see
Prince Felipe take the throne sooner rather
than later. According to the Co-
a conservative "She
geLS along very with Letizia. And I think
Letizia is very close to the Queen." Others say
the Princess to he Queen. "She is
pecting it every day," said an
January, support for the monar-
chy had fallen to a historic low of 54
Ln February a Palace compelled to
tell the press that Juan Carlos had no plans
to abdicate, and that no plan existed to fast
track the succession of Felipe. The following
month a new poll showed that an astounding
85.9 percent of Spaniards felt Prince Felipe
prepared to assume the throne.
Even when Juan Carlos tried to do
thing right, it seemed to turn out wrong. [n
May the royal household announced that the
King, "for austerity reasons," was going to
turn over to the government his $27 million,
yacht , Fortuna (each refueling of
which reportedly costs more than $30,000)
"The National Heritage board must now
prove the transfer to the government," an-
nounced a spokesman for that institution,
"which could decide to keep it or sell it." There
was only one problem: the group of Majorca
Tourism and
Cultural Foundation of the Balearic Islands
who had given the King the boat 13 years ago
to replace a previous yacht given to him by
the late Saudi King Fahd, wanted it back. The
matter not been resolved
For the most part, Spain's political and me
dia establishments would prefer that the King
stay, fearing a shock to the to
leave while the nation is in such dire straits
"We are very clear against abdication," said
Pedro Ramirez. for the resignation of
the minister ofhealth or foreign ifhe has
done something wrong. But you don't ask for
the abdication ofthe Ki ng, just because he has
been out of the country on a weekend in
tswana with a blonde woman. 1 j1Jundo is
ing the only scenarios in which we would
ask for abdication would be, first , ifhe has a
rious health problem-mai nJy mental incapac-
ity. And, second, if not
tial evidence but real proof of wrongdoing."
Pepe told me, "Abdication is not
ing to happen. Felipe is a wonderful and very
well-prepared man, but everYlhing has
its time and place And I think it's still King
Juan Carlos's time." Fanjul said the
days were now "half work, half rehabilita
tion. He's off pain medication. He's putting
the past behind him and looking forward
to the future." In mid-July, Juan Carlos made
his first trip outside Spain since his hip opera
tion, to Morocco for a three-day state visit to
King Mohammed VI. He arrived in Rabat
walking with two canes
As Vanity Fair went to press, friends of
the King stepped forward with declarations
of support. The Russian conductor Valery
Gergiev, who meets up Wilh Juan Carlos at
international soccer matches, called to pass
along Vladimir Putin's high regard for the
to praise "a very special human
quality he has-he gives you his unconditional
attention and consideration. I can tell you, not
every head of state does thaL" Bill Clin-
ton, in an weighed in on whether Juan
Carlos should stay: "This is the King's
decision. We have been friends for more than
two decades. I believe that he will do what
he lhinks is best for the people of Spain and
that, whatever he does, he will find to
be of public service. I also know that his son
is able, patriotic, and has been well prepared
by his
FROM THE ARCHIVE

Juan on fop
(T.
ConSlantine II tries to take back
Grcecc r"la<:eUo. .fll(r '995)
6 3 A Y N A V