Juan Carlos I made his first company in Switzerland when he was only five or six years old. One day, a Spaniard who had been visiting his father at the Hotel Royal in Lausanne, where the Bourbons lived between 1942 and 1946, gave him a golden quill. Juanito, never having a penny in his pocket to buy candy or chocolates from the shop in front of the apartment, went into the lobby, sold the pen to the royal porter for five francs, and rushed to the candy store. As soon as the Count of Barcelona found out about this, he went to the porter, gave him 10 francs and took the pen back. Don Juan angrily said to his son, “You made me lose five francs.” The emeritus king himself recalled this story in conversations he had with writer José Luis de Vilallonga for his biography, El Rey “ led. The anecdote illustrates the financial hardship the royal family endured in exile and the humiliation they felt at being economically dependent on the wealthy Spanish aristocrats who made a living outside of Spain.
A few weeks ago, Juan Carlos I returned to Lake Geneva to attend the graduation of his granddaughter Irene Urdangarin, daughter of Infanta Cristina and Iñaki Urdangarin. The king emeritus, who has lived in Abu Dhabi since the summer of 2020, flew on a hired private jet and chaired a family dinner at one of his favorite hotels, the Four Seasons des Bergues. The luxurious property is just 50 minutes from Vieille Fontaine, the palace where his grandmother, Queen Victoria Eugenia, lived and where his engagement dinner to Doña Sofía was held in 1961. It was not disclosed whether Felipe VI’s father. one day remained longer in the region of Lake Geneva, an important place in his life and reign. There his uncle Alfonso de Borbón y Battenberg, the eldest son of Alfonso XIII, had to renounce his dynastic rights in order to marry the Cuban citizen Edelmira Sampedro. And exactly this resignation, which is now exactly 90 years old, was the starting point for Juan Carlos I towards the throne.
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Alfonso XIII did not attend the wedding of his son Alfonso to Edelmira, which took place on June 21, 1933 in the Church of the Sacred Heart of Ouchy near Lausanne. The historian Ricardo de la Cierva, in his book Victoria Eugenia, tells how, a few days after the marriage, the dethroned king also forced his second son Jaime, who had been deaf and dumb from birth, to surrender his inheritance rights in favor of Don Juan waive. Jaime had a tragic life and died under strange circumstances in Saint-Gallen Swiss Hospital. His resignation would later give Juanito an advantage in the race for the Spanish throne. When the Emeritus King turned four today, his father began his official education. The Count of Barcelona gave him a tutor, Eugenio Vegas Latapié, an ultra-conservative intellectual for whom, according to José Luis de Vilallonga, “democracy was synonymous with Bolshevism”. Curiously, at the same time, in 45, with the Second World War in the background, don Juan was broadcasting the Lausanne Manifesto on the BBC. In this statement he denounced the fascist origins of the Franco regime and called on Franco to retire in favor of a “moderate constitutional monarchy”.
Lausanne was the place Don Juan Carlos and Doña Sofía chose to announce their engagement in 1961.Daniele Darolle (Sygma via Getty Images)
In 1946, after the end of the war, the Spanish royal family left neutral Switzerland and moved to Estoril in Portugal. Juanito stayed in the Swiss countryside, at Villa Saint-Jean, a boarding school for Marian religious in Fribourg. “Entering boarding school was the end of my childhood, a world without cares, full of family warmth,” the king recalled in 2003 to British historian Paul Preston. At the age of eight he had to face abandonment, loneliness and severe discipline. In her 2013 biography of the monarch, French writer Laurence Debray describes how the little prince waited in vain for a call from his mother every day. Don Juan had forbidden María de las Mercedes to call her son. “It wasn’t cruelty on his part, and certainly not a lack of sensitivity. But my father knew that princes require a strict upbringing if you want to turn them into responsible men who will one day be able to bear the weight of the state,” Juan Carlos I explained in 1993 to José Luis de Vilallonga.
This stage in Switzerland was one of the saddest and loneliest in his life. Don Juan feared the Falange’s hostility towards the royal family so much that, fearing poisoning, he asked the director of the boarding school to destroy the gifts sent to his son, especially sweets and other sweets. Queen Victoria Eugenia, her grandmother and godmother, was the only relative close to her. She visited him regularly and sometimes took him to spend the weekend with her. In February 1948, at the age of 10, Juanito underwent emergency surgery for a severe middle ear infection. Since his parents could not be found on a cruise in Cuba, he spent twelve days alone in a Swiss hospital. Three months later, the Count of Barcelona and Franco met on the Azor yacht in the Bay of Biscay, where they agreed that the boy would continue his studies in Spain, “guarded” by the Franco regime.
A picture of exile: Juan de Borbón and his wife María de las Mercedes with their four children Alfonso, Juan Carlos, María del Pilar and Margarita in Switzerland in 1945. Keystone (Getty Images)
This decision marked the beginning of a difficult period between Don Juan and Juan Carlos, a period of rivalry that Franco fueled. For years, the dictator played with the ambitions of father and son to rule. The tension between the two was palpable at Queen Victoria Eugenia’s funeral, held in Lausanne in 1969. That same summer, Franco appointed Juan Carlos to succeed him as head of state with the title of king, skipping a generation of the Bourbon dynasty.
an exciting episode
A few decades later, Switzerland was again the scene of one of the most tense moments in the life of Juan Carlos I. In mid-June 1992, the press accused the Prime Minister of delaying the appointment of a successor to the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Francisco Fernández Ordóñez, who was suffering from an illness . Then Felipe González recalled that any appointment had to be approved by the king and said a phrase that caused an earthquake in the monarchy: “The king is not here.” It didn’t take long for journalists in Switzerland to track him down. EL PAÍS indicated that he was undergoing a medical examination, but Sabino Fernández Campos, director of Casa del Rey, denied this version. La Zarzuela confirmed he was resting but Jaime Peñafiel denied the palace. “The king is going through a very delicate emotional moment, stemming from an old marital problem that has turned into a crisis,” the journalist said on the radio, citing marital difficulties with Queen Sofía.
Juan Carlos I returned briefly to Madrid to meet with the governor and put an end to the rumours. He returned to Switzerland a few hours later and missed his father’s 79th birthday in Madrid. Finally, the foreign press brought to light his relationship with Marta Gayá, a Catalan socialite living in Mallorca. The monarch was with her in Helvetian land.
This episode marked a before and after. From that moment there were no secrets in his life. In 2013, El Mundo published an investigation that revealed the Count of Barcelona had left his children a secret fortune in accounts abroad. The bulk of the estate consisted of three accounts domiciled in Switzerland: one in Geneva and two in Lausanne. A total of 728 million pesetas, about 7.85 million euros. Juan Carlos I received 375 million, about 2.25 million euros. The Casa del Rey came forward and explained that don Juan’s accounts had been closed before 1995 and that the head of state no longer had any money abroad. Zarzuela also said he was confident that the executors had paid the relevant taxes and that the millions had been used to pay off the Count of Barcelona’s debts, although he had no documents to back this up.
The Kings of Spain on a visit to Zurich, Switzerland, in 2011. Harold Cunningham (Getty Images)
For several months in 2013, Zarzuela swore that the king no longer had any accounts in Switzerland. Shortly thereafter, it was revealed that the monarch’s private finances continued to flow through this country. His accidental fall while hunting in Botswana not only sheds light on his extramarital relationship with Corinna Larsen, but also on his wealth and business interests outside of Spain. After the sentimental break, Larsen accused him of charging commissions and having accounts in Switzerland. Geneva prosecutors investigated and uncovered a network of secret bank accounts, shell companies, front men, commissions, donations in the millions and shady foundations… The scandal hastened the end of Juan Carlos de Borbón’s rule and his exile in Abu Dhabi, but all ways continue to lead him to Switzerland.