The former king of Spain, Juan Carlos, who was forced into exile after scandals, describes himself as a “wounded man” in memoirs released on Wednesday (5/11) in France, which he has co-authored with writer Laurence Debreux. At the same time, he says he dreams of returning to his country and acknowledges his mistakes.

“Not a day goes by that I am not flooded with nostalgia. It’s as if Spain is stuck to my skin,” asserts the 87-year-old former monarch, who has been living in self-exile in the United Arab Emirates since 2020. He confesses that he was very afraid of “dying without having been able to narrate everything, to explain everything.”

In this 500-page book written in the first person and entitled “Reconciliation” (“Réconciliation”, published by Stock), Juan Carlos, who abdicated the throne in 2014, acknowledges “mistakes”, such as his relationship with one of his mistresses, the German aristocrat Corina Larsen, whom he refers to without naming her.

“I cannot avoid this affair, since it had a painful impact on my reign and my destiny. But I refer to it with a heavy heart. And it will certainly be the only time,” Juan Carlos confesses.

The episode that tarnished his reputation

They were together in 2012 in Botswana on a hunt during which the king was injured, an episode that had caused a stir in a country then mired in economic crisis and helped tarnish the monarch’s reputation.

The former king also revisits the many gifts he had received during his reign, calling it a “serious mistake” that he had accepted a $100 million gift on behalf of King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia. It was “a gift I should have refused.”

“He says publicly that he regrets certain things. It’s quite clear,” underlines to Agence France-Presse Laurence Debreux, who was speaking in French with Juan Carlos, who speaks, according to her, “good old French.” “It’s his version, his truth, it’s truly the story with a capital I, but in a description from the inside, from his own personal point of view,” according to her.

The author, who had already written a biography of the monarch in 2013 and submitted questions for a documentary shortly before his resignation in 2014, settled in Abu Dhabi in September 2022 to compile his memoir.

Juan Carlos ascended to the Spanish throne in 1975, following the death of dictator Franco, who had named him as his successor. He was a major figure on the international scene and was respected for decades for allowing the return of democracy to Spain.

Shortly before Franco’s death, “I was sitting next to him in his hospital bed. He took my hand and said to me, as if with his last breath, ‘Your Highness, I ask only one thing of you: maintain the unity of the country.’ I therefore had my hands free to start reforms,” he recounts. Juan Carlos is, in any case, a unique European destiny; he is one of the only living leaders since the Second World War,” according to Laurence Debreux.

In his memoir, the former king also mentions his wife, Sophia, who has remained in Spain, where he makes occasional visits. “I bitterly regret that my wife never made the trip to see me. I suspect she doesn’t want to anger her son,” the current King of Spain, Philip VI, assures.

In Spain, where his memoirs will be published in December, “they had for him the image of a man quite open-hearted, quite close to people, quite sympathetic.” But in reality, “he is nevertheless a man who was very lonely, very torn between his family and Franco, from the tenderest age,” assures Laurence Debreux.

For the end of his life, Juan Carlos would like “above all to return to Spain, to home”. “I would like to rediscover my place. That of a man fully dedicated to his country. Who hopes to be buried in it with honour,” he confesses.