How Juan Carlos I turned a laughing inventory

A brand new play based mostly on the lifetime of King Juan Carlos I sees a satirised parody of the disgraced monarch moan about how ‘s***’ being a royal is – and declare that ‘the English’ are the worst of them.

El Rey Que Fue – which means, The King Who Was – follows an exiled ruler who decides to organise an ostentatious yacht social gathering within the waters of the Persian Gulf in 2023.

The manufacturing – which kicked off at Madrid’s Infanta Isabel theater final week – takes some heavy handed inspiration from actual life, with the Rey Emerito, 85, at the moment in exile within the United Arab Emirates.

Effectively pressured to abdicate in 2014, the actual Juan Carlos finds himself surrounded by allegations of monetary impropriety and largely ostracised from his household.

The play journeys by way of what creator Albert Boadella considers to be the king’s ruminations 10 years after giving up the crown.

Dialogue ranges from tongue in cheek to chaotic, with Juan Carlos – performed by revered actor Ramón Fontseré – exclaiming that he has to ‘put up together with his spouse Sofía and his daughter-in-law Letizia, journalists and heads of presidency’.

And moments within the plot – together with the method of an enormous storm that lands the theatrically cane-walking Ramón with a suitcase full of cash – seem to cement the cartoonish caricature the monarch has grow to be to the Spanish public, with audiences reportedly erupting in laughs earlier than any dialogue is even spoken.

Albert himself, chatting with La Razon, claims that his private interactions with Juan Carlos is one thing he has ‘taken benefit of’ to create the work.

One anecdote he utilised from conversations with the royal was Juan Carlos’s dislike of ‘the music he known as ‘ñi ñi ñi’ which he supposes is the chamber music that he has needed to endure within the National Auditorium or the Real’.

He additionally reportedly instructed Albert that he enjoys going to music, however will get ‘bored’ attending with Queen Sofía. 

However, the playwright admitted that the final time he spoke to the ex-ruler was earlier than his abdication, and the character of their relationship is unclear.

‘We spent a few hours speaking about the whole lot,’ he instructed the outlet.

Speaking to El Pais, the creator additionally proclaimed that ‘if Shakespeare had lived in our time, earlier than Hamlet or Macbeth he would have written a textual content about Juan Carlos I’. 

‘The lifetime of the emeritus is completely Shakespearean, an amazing traditional tragedy,’ he stated.

‘A boy, separated from his mother and father and beneath the guardianship of a dictator, who kills his brother. Who is at all times within the center, between the dictator and his father, as if he had been a ball within the ping-pong sport.

‘Don’t inform me that this isn’t a narrative with all the weather of a Shakespearean tragedy.’

The self-branded ‘tragicomedy’ paints a portrait of a Juan Carlos that favours pop duo Los del Río (of Macarena fame) to classical compositions, petulantly insists that he is nonetheless the King and boasts of by no means having completed a e-book in his life.

At one level within the script, the king reportedly says: ‘Today, being king in Spain is s***. 

‘All monarchies are for adornment and the English are the worst. What is my son at present?

‘A puppet within the arms of politicians. They inform him to banish his father and he does.’

A synopsis for the present, by politically astute theatre firm ELS JOGLARS, describes the play as ‘a journey to nowhere’.

‘The motion takes place in 2023, within the Persian Gulf. An emeritus, previous and exiled king desires to really feel the style of his distant and beloved homeland,’ the plot reads.

‘He arranges a celebration on an opulent sailboat to style a scrumptious paella on the excessive seas. Journalists, pals, sheikhs and household are invited. What can go improper?’

The manufacturing was reportedly rejected by the publicly owned Spanish theatre in Madrid. 

Times have modified for Spain’s Juan Carlos, as soon as probably the most glamorous king in Europe – and by a long way.

No longer the monarch, styling himself as Rey Emerito or King Emeritus as a substitute, the 85-year-old lives not in Madrid’s Zarzuela Palace however in exile within the United Arab Emirates.

Such is the controversy surrounding the previous king that when,  in October, his granddaughter Leonor, inheritor the the throne, reached her 18th birthday and swore fealty to the Spanish structure, Juan Carlos was not invited to the general public ceremony, solely the household gathering afterwards.

Spool again to the mid-Seventies, nevertheless, and his popularity might hardly have been extra totally different. 

At the start of his reign, he had been key to Spain‘s peaceable transition to democracy following the four-decade dictatorship of Francisco Franco.

He was born in January, in Rome, in 1938 to Infante Juan, Count of Barcelona, and Princess María de las Mercedes of Bourbon-Two Sicilies.

His Italian upbringing was as a consequence of his household’s exile in 1931 and the bloody Spanish Civil War, which led to Franco’s rise to energy.

Groomed by the scary dictator to switch him, Juan Carlos’s childhood and adolescence was ‘appalling’, based on his British biographer Professor Paul Preston.

‘I feel it explains lots. The privations of his childhood and adolescence would possibly properly rely for a few of the avarice shall we embrace, the urge to gather cash in a method or one other,’ he instructed the podcast Corinna and the King final 12 months.

Juan Carlos’ first encounter with scandal got here on the age of 18 in 1956 after the unintended killing of his 14-year-old brother, Alfonso.

The surprising incident is claimed to have occurred when Juan Carlos, dwelling for Easter from his navy faculty, was cleansing a revolver he had been given by Franco.

The shot hit Alfonso within the brow and {the teenager} died immediately.

After being pressured to swear he had not carried out it on goal, Juan Carlos was despatched again to his austere academy.  Don Juan by no means forgave his son, however he tirelessly tried to revive the Spanish throne on his behalf.

At Juan of Bourbon’s behest, Franco grew near the younger prince and have become satisfied that Juan Carlos ought to succeed him and preserve his hardline regime.

Having saved Juan Carlos shut by in his last years, Franco hoped that he would preserve his ultraconservative regime after his loss of life. When Franco nominated Juan Carlos as his successor in 1969, it got here as a shock to many.

His swearing of loyalty to Franco’s Movimiento Nacional on being chosen as the following ruler signified that he was ready to proceed with the established order.

But when the dictator died in 1975, Juan Carlos ignored those that wished an extension to autocratic rule and as a substitute ushered in parliamentary democracy.

His place was additional cemented when, in 1981, he noticed off a coup d’etat try that noticed disgruntled members of the Guardia Civil try to seize energy.

Facing the obvious catch-22 of both fleeing Spain or staying and risking loss of life, Juan Carlos made a public tv broadcast whereas sporting his uniform as the pinnacle of the armed forces.

Support for the coup melted away, while the king’s reputation skyrocketed.

Juan Carlos, who has three youngsters – two daughters and a son – together with his spouse Queen Sofia, previously Princess Sofia of Greece – then loved years of adoration.

He had an excellent relationship with Queen Elizabeth and the British royal household, with one {photograph} exhibiting him chatting to the late Princess Diana as a younger Prince William sat between his legs.

His 1992 interview with broadcaster Selina Scott demonstrated his attract.

He was seen piloting his helicopter, racing round in his velocity boat and using his Harley Davidson bike within the backyard of his palace.

For practically three many years, the favored king was capable of preserve the extra seedy particulars of his non-public life out of the highlight.

Princess Diana denied recommendations that Juan Carlos ever made a move at her, however did say that he could possibly be a ‘little too attentive’.

On the topic of his illicit lovers, Spanish creator Amadeo Martinez Ingles claimed he slept with 62 ladies in only one six-month stint, and allegedly bedded greater than 2,000 feminine companions between 1976 and 1994.

One rumoured mistress, the 18-year-old actress Sandra Mozarowsky, died in mysterious circumstances in 1977 after falling from her balcony.

Public cash price greater than £500,000 at present was additionally allegedly paid to Spain’s 1971 Miss World candidate, Barbara Rey, so she wouldn’t spill the beans on their romance.

Another lover, the Spanish photographer Queca Campillo, instructed how, as a result of they’d nowhere to satisfy for his or her amorous encounters, she would go to the again entrance of the Zarzuela Palace – the royal residence – and meet ‘in a van they’d’.

Meanwhile, the king remained married to Queen Sofia, although it has been reported that the 2 haven’t shared a mattress for the reason that late Seventies.

But it was his five-year relationship with the glamourous German-Danish aristocrat Corinna, coupled together with his love of big-game looking, that may in the end result in his downfall.

The pair turned more and more shut after they started their affair in 2004.

The king confirmed the extent of his obvious love for her by giving her a hoop that she was cautious to not put on in public.

But the businesswoman broke off the romantic aspect of their relationship when she found that he had secretly been in one other adulterous long-term tryst.

In 2012, she was persuaded to hitch him on a looking journey to Botswana to have fun her son’s birthday.

But when the king fell after a night of ingesting, she needed to give up the usage of her non-public airplane so the injured monarch could possibly be secretly flown again to Spain.

An official airplane was off the playing cards as a result of the all-expenses journey had been paid for by a Syrian businessman and saved secret from the federal government.

The subsequent information of the luxurious getaway, and the emergence of a photograph of Juan Carlos posing with a lifeless elephant he had killed throughout an earlier journey, triggered a worldwide media frenzy, with Corinna now firmly within the highlight.

The Spanish individuals had been livid that their king had launched into a lavish jaunt costing round £35,000 when the nation was going by way of a horrible recession and youth unemployment stood at 50 per cent.

Juan Carlos issued a grovelling public apology for his Botswana journey and gave up his £20million yacht, in addition to taking a pay reduce.

But that didn’t cease the collapse of the decades-long settlement with the Spanish media to disregard his salacious non-public life, and so Juan Carlos’s popularity continued to nosedive.

In the months earlier than his abdication, hypothesis about his future was rife as each of his hips had to get replaced and he wanted the assistance of a cane throughout appearances.

Further ignominy hit the Spanish royal household in 2013 when Juan Carlos’s daughter Cristina was investigated for corruption alongside her husband.

After a probe lasting greater than three years, Cristina – who turned the primary Spanish royal to seem in courtroom – was acquitted, though her husband was jailed and she or he was stripped of her title by her brother.

 On June 18, 2014, Juan Carlos formally abdicated. He instructed his topics: ‘I’ve determined to finish my reign and abdicate the crown of Spain.

‘A brand new era is sort of rightly demanding to take the lead function.’

On the way in which out, he additionally took a swipe at Prince Charles, saying: ‘We don’t want my son to wither ready like Prince Charles.’

In August 2020, after six years out of the highlight, he opted to go away Spain, saying he didn’t need his private affairs to undermine his son King Felipe VI’s reign.

Earlier that 12 months, his son had stripped him of an annual allowance of practically 200,000 euros as particulars of his monetary dealings emerged.

And Spain’s Supreme Court had launched an investigation simply two months earlier than his departure into his alleged involvement in a high-speed rail contract in Saudi Arabia.

The late Saudi King Abdullah allegedly deposited £77million (85million euros) right into a Swiss checking account that Juan Carlos was stated to have entry to.

However, the case was in the end dropped.

In October 2023, Juan Carlos gained a bid to finish a £126million High Court battle together with his Danish ex-lover who accused him of spying on and harassing her.

Businesswoman Corinna zu Sayn-Wittgenstein-Sayn, who’s in her late 50s, claimed the previous royal had precipitated her ‘nice psychological ache’.

Juan Carlos denied wrongdoing and disputed the claims made in opposition to him, arguing they don’t seem to be ‘viable’.

In a judgment on the High Court in London, Justice Rowena Collins Rice stated the courtroom ‘lacks jurisdiction to do this declare’ as a result of it was introduced in opposition to the defendant outdoors of his nation of domicile.

She added that Ms zu Sayn-Wittgenstein-Sayn ‘has not sufficiently established that the “harmful event” of which she complains – harassment by the defendant – occurred in England’.

In an announcement, Juan Carlos – who abdicated in 2014 – stated he welcomed the choose’s resolution. Meanwhile, Ms zu Sayn-Wittgenstein-Sayn stated she was ‘deeply disillusioned’.