Spain’s disgraced former monarch, Juan Carlos I, has revealed the moment dictator Francisco Franco personally summoned him to name him as his heir – a decision that would alter the course of the nation’s modern history.
Juan Carlos, now 87, recounts the episode in his long-awaited memoir, released in France on Wednesday to mark both the 50th anniversary of Franco’s death and the restoration of the Spanish monarchy. ALSO READ: Spanish government seeks to speed up the dissolution of Franco foundation.
Published in France under the title Juan Carlos I d’Espagne: Réconciliation, the 512-page memoir was co-written with French author Laurence Debray. In the book, the former king also speaks for the first time of his enduring sorrow over the death of his younger brother Alfonso, who was accidentally shot at the family’s home in exile in Portugal in 1956.
According to El País, the memoir also records Juan Carlos’s dismay when his son, King Felipe VI, informed him that he was renouncing his inheritance and withdrawing the allowance he had received as former head of state, after allegations of financial misconduct emerged in 2020. ALSO READ: Former king Juan Carlos ‘pays €678k to tax office’ to avoid further action.
Juan Carlos, who ruled from 1975 until his abdication in 2014, praises Franco — the man who groomed him for the throne and appointed him successor over his own father, Don Juan.
‘One day Franco summoned me to his office. He told me bluntly: ‘I am going to name you my successor as king. Do you accept?’ I was stunned; I asked whether I could have time to think, but he expected an answer quickly. I was caught between a rock and a hard place. Silence reigned; I could hear only my own breathing. I accepted — as a duty and an obligation. Did I have another choice?’
The memoir is divided into seven sections. Its opening chapters trace the former king’s childhood in exile and the tragedy that, he writes, ‘marked him forever’ — the death of Alfonso de Borbón while the two brothers were playing with a gun. ‘I didn’t like to talk about it, and this is the first time I do,’ he writes.
He continues: ‘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.’
The memoir revisits another painful moment in March 2020, when Felipe told him he was giving up his inheritance and cancelling his annual stipend. ”This announcement means you reject me,’ I told him. ‘Do not forget that you inherit a political system I built. You may exclude me on a personal and financial level, but you cannot reject the institutional inheritance in which you grew up. There is only one step between the two,’” Juan Carlos writes in the book.
The book opens with his account of exile: in the summer of 2020 he left for Abu Dhabi, writing of the nostalgia he feels for Spain. ‘Because of pressure from the media and the government, following the revelation of a bank account I had in Switzerland and entirely unfounded accusations, I decided to leave, so as not to hinder the proper functioning of the Crown or inconvenience my son in carrying out his duties as sovereign,’ he explains. ALSO READ: Spain’s disgraced former king makes third visit home since moving to Abu Dhabi.
On his undeclared fortune — €65 million received from the late King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia — he concedes it was ‘a gift I did not know how to refuse. A grave mistake,’ while also lamenting: ‘I am the only Spaniard who receives no pension after almost forty years of service.’ ALSO READ: Corinna claims in podcast that Juan Carlos would ‘return home with bags full of cash’.
When reflecting on his estranged wife, Queen Sofía, he recalls his youthful romances until, he writes, Franco told him it was time to ‘stop fooling around and get married’.
He recounts one of the defining moments of his reign — the attempted coup of 23 February 1981. ‘It is one of those nights I will always remember — and I think all Spaniards will too. I still have doubts and questions about how events unfolded and who was involved. The only certainty is that the military tried, with weapons, to betray Spain’s young democracy — my work — and I could not tolerate it,’ he writes. ALSO READ: Spain marks 40 years since failed coup d’état, in absence of Juan Carlos I.
Later chapters turn to his private life … ‘which is not so private’. He writes: ‘The media have attributed to me a dozen extramarital affairs, most of them completely fictitious. As if all my ties with the opposite sex had to be romantic relationships. As if friendship between men and women were impossible.’
Of his former mistress, Corinna zu Sayn-Wittgenstein – also known as Corinna Larsen, and with whom he has fought a long legal battle, he admits their affair was ‘the weakness of a man’ and a ‘mistake’, expressing remorse towards Sofía. ALSO READ: Spain’s disgraced former king Juan Carlos to sue ex-lover for defamation.
Juan Carlos’s downfall began in 2012, when it was revealed he had joined Larsen on an elephant-hunting trip in Botswana while Spain was mired in economic crisis. He abdicated two years later amid growing scandal.
The memoir closes with a note of contrition. ‘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.’
He continues: ‘What matters most to me is that the Crown outlives me and continues to make Spain shine — that the spirit of the transition [to democracy] which united us persists for the good of the country, where I would like to find my place: that of a man who gave himself entirely to his nation.’ ALSO READ: Spain’s prosecutors drop investigations into finances of former king Juan Carlos.
In 2020, after reports of corruption scandals and offshore funds, Juan Carlos was stripped of his €200,000 annual stipend as emeritus king and went into exile in Abu Dhabi. Having since settled his tax debts and seen the investigations shelved, he remains unable to return permanently to Spain — a move opposed by Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s socialist government and, reportedly, by his son, who has sought to rebuild the monarchy’s reputation in a country with deep republican roots. ALSO READ: Spanish supreme court dismisses tax complaint against former king Juan Carlos.
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Juan Carlos I: la Corona española “reposa enteramente sobre mí”.
Es uno de los momentos que revela en su libro ‘Reconciliación’, que se publica este miércoles en Francia, y en el que repasa su vida desde su nacimiento.https://t.co/hJuXA66HEv pic.twitter.com/mjW3e2EfkD
— EFE Noticias (@EFEnoticias) November 5, 2025
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