Juan Carlos, the former king of Spain, has fled the country

Where in the world is Juan Carlos?

Lesson summary

Hi there, welcome to Plain English lesson number 289. I’m Jeff; JR is the producer; and this full lesson can be found at PlainEnglish.com/289.

Coming up today: Juan Carlos, the former king of Spain, has fled the country. Only few people know where he is—and they’re not talking. The expression we’ll talk about is “come to light” and JR has a song of the week.

Spain’s former king has left the country

The ex-King Juan Carlos shocked Spain by saying he was fleeing the country—but he did not say where he was going.

The former monarch has been plagued with scandal for years, but has always seemed to escape direct responsibility for any wrongdoing. Under Spanish law, a sitting king is immune from prosecution. The civilian government has, in the past, not shown much appetite for leading investigations of the monarchy. Business leaders and the media have by tradition treated the Spanish royal family with kid gloves. These traditions and the law protecting a king from prosecution were designed to promote stability, but now many Spaniards are wondering whether such protection allowed Juan Carlos to use his position for personal benefit with impunity.

Juan Carlos abdicated the throne—meaning, he resigned as king—in 2014. Though he was popular for much of his reign, his support collapsed after a series of scandals. His daughter’s husband was under investigation for corruption and he was perceived as out of touch with Spaniards, who were suffering through a deep recession. In one particularly bad example, Juan Carlos said he was so worried about Spain’s economy that he was losing sleep. Just weeks later, he was discovered on a lavish elephant hunting trip with a German mistress in Botswana.

In 2012, one of the worst years of Spain’s recession, he gave 65 million euros to this mistress and then asked for the money back; she refused.

Since his abdication, Juan Carlos’s son, Felipe VI, is king and has been generally well-respected and has lived a much more modest lifestyle than his father. Still, the former king continues to cause problems for Spain’s monarchy.

Now that he is no longer king, Juan Carlos does not enjoy immunity from prosecution. That is a problem for him: In June, Spain’s Supreme Court opened an investigation into allegations that the former king received illegal commissions from a high-speed rail construction project in Saudi Arabia. According to media reports, as King he received 100 million euros from Saudi Arabia in illegal commissions in 2008, which he deposited in a Swiss bank account.

Many in Spain are now re-assessing Juan Carlos’s reign. They are focusing on his lavish lifestyle that included Ferraris, a yacht, luxury vacations, and a London apartment—all while receiving a stipend from the government to cover “living expenses.”

The source of all his private wealth has been subject to speculation; his critics say he was too close to Arab-world dictators. His London apartment, worth 62 million euros, was a gift from the sultan of Oman—a gift, many believe, that was not given out of pure friendship. He has been accused of accepting bribes and kickbacks from Kuwait and Bahrain in addition to Saudi Arabia. After the killing of the activist Jamaal Khashoggi in 2018, Juan Carlos was photographed shaking hands with the Saudi crown prince, who is widely assumed to have had a role in the killing.

Spain’s public opinion is divided on this issue. Some people think the former king should return and face a trial for what he did, while others want to give him the benefit of the doubt. Many of the allegations against him are as yet unproven. They have not yet been proven, in part because the former monarch has never been subject to a thorough investigation.

In a bid to distance himself and the monarchy from the scandal, Spain’s current king, Felipe VI, has renounced any inheritance he might have received from his father and he said that Juan Carlos would no longer receive a public stipend. But the royal house refused to say where Juan Carlos is.

Spain’s government, including its prime minister Pedro Sánchez, is not saying whether it had any role in the former king’s disappearance. People speculated the king had fled to the Dominican Republic or to Portugal, but nobody has seen him. The left-wing Podemos party is using the occasion to argue for the abolition of the monarchy, but most other parties, including the ruling Socialists, still support Felipe VI and the monarchy in general.

Before the scandals started coming to light in 2012, Juan Carlos enjoyed strong public approval. One poll released just before the elephant hunting trip estimated his public approval at 80 percent. He acceded to the throne just days after the downfall of Spain’s military dictator, Francisco Franco, in 1974. Juan Carlos is credited with facilitating Spain’s return to democracy and with presiding over a dramatic period of modernization and rising living standards.

Monarchies in Europe

I do not envy Felipe VI right now. By all accounts, he seems to be taking his responsibility seriously and has distanced himself from his father’s wrongdoing. But in addition to the public crisis, it’s also a family drama for Felipe VI.

In researching this lesson, I saw that the number of monarchies in Europe declined from 22 to 12 in the last one hundred years. At first that seems like a lot, but that covered a hundred years! I wonder if any of the remaining 12 will be around after a few more generations.