In his much-awaited memoir, Spain’s exiled king Juan Carlos I details for the first time his lasting sadness over the death of his brother, Alfonso, whom he shot in a firearms accident at the family’s home in exile in Portugal in 1956.
The memoir, published this week in France under the title Juan Carlos I d’Espagne: Réconciliation, is written with the French author Laurence Debray and divided into seven parts.
The former monarch recounts his childhood in exile and the first tragedy that “marked him forever”, the death of his brother Alfonso de Borbón, while the two were playing with a gun. “I didn’t like to talk about it, and this is the first time I do,” he writes.
He wrote: “We had no idea there was a bullet left in the chamber … He died in my father’s arms. There is a before and an after. It is still difficult for me to speak of it, and I think of it every day … I miss him; I wish I could have him by my side and talk with him. I lost a friend, a confidant.
“He left me with an immense emptiness. Without his death, my life would have been less dark, less unhappy.”
Juan Carlos, then aged 18, and Alfonso, aged 14, had been apparently playing with a Star Bonifacio Echeverria automatic pistol owned by Alfonso.
The former Spanish monarch explained that the pistol’s magazine had been removed so he had thought it posed no danger.
Their father, the Count of Barcelona, reportedly grabbed him by the neck and said: “Swear to me that you didn’t do it on purpose!”
The book, divided into seven parts, will be published in Spanish in December, to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the death of Franco and the restoration of the monarchy.
The memoir also reveals the moment that the dictator Francisco Franco summoned him to anoint him as his heir, changing the course of Spanish history.
Juan Carlos abdicated in 2014 in favour of his son amid a storm of controversy, surrounding extramarital affairs and suspicions about financial corruption. In August 2020, six years after his abdication, Juan Carlos opted to leave Spain, saying he did not want his personal affairs to undermine his son’s reign.
As reported in the Daily Mail, concluding his memoirs, Juan Carlos wrote: “I know I may have disappointed some … I have acknowledged that in these pages. I am no saint. Power has not stifled my personality, which I have never hidden … I do not know whether the sacrifice of leaving Spain is useful or properly appreciated. It has changed me greatly as a man.”