Former King of Spain, Juan Carlos, Details Death of Brother in Memoir

The former king of Spain, Juan Carlos, published a memoir this week, detailing the accidental shooting death of his younger brother nearly 70 years ago, his abiding respect for the nation’s former dictator and his sense of isolation since abdicating.

“Réconciliation,” the 500-page French version of the book, was released in France by Stock on Wednesday. It is scheduled to be published in Spanish by Planeta on Dec. 3.

In the book, Juan Carlos, who now lives in the United Arab Emirates, gives his account of how his younger brother, Alfonso, died in 1956.

An 18-year-old military cadet at the time, Juan Carlos was visiting his family in Portugal. He and his brother, 14, were playing with a pistol when it went off, according to excerpts from the book published by The Telegraph. Juan Carlos wrote that the brothers did not know there was a bullet in the pistol, which was fired into the air, ricocheted and struck Alfonso in the forehead, according to the excerpts.

“I lost a friend, a confidant. He left a huge void,” Juan Carlos said in the book, according to an excerpt published by The Guardian. “Without his death, my life would have been less bleak, less unhappy.”

The release of the book coincides with the 50th anniversary of the death of Gen. Francisco Franco, the dictator who led Spain for nearly four decades and installed Juan Carlos as king and head of state in 1975. Juan Carlos through the decades has expressed his respect for Gen. Franco.

Gen. Franco led a military coup in 1936, sending the nation into a civil war, that ended with him taking power in 1939.

He ruled the nation for four decades, before bringing the monarchy back. Juan Carlos’s subsequent work to install democracy was not a path that the dictator had intended. But the king’s later scandals and abdication sharpened the tension between Spain’s modern monarchy and a growing nostalgia for its authoritarian past.

The former king’s publishers and the Spanish royal family did not immediately return requests for comment early Friday.

According to excerpts from the book, Juan Carlos said that he finally agreed to write his memoir because his story “was being stolen from me,” and despite a warning from his father never to share his private life.

Juan Carlos I, 87, was born in Rome in 1938 into a royal family in exile, like many European monarchs of the era, while the Spanish monarchy had been abolished years earlier. He moved to Spain at age 10 and, in 1962, married Sophia, a Greek princess.

Gen. Franco, who then ruled Spain, designated Juan Carlos as his successor in 1969, seeing him as a unifying force for a nation healing from decades of his authoritarian rule. The war, from 1936 to 1939, had divided Spain and inspired republican movements globally.

Juan Carlos led Spain through its return to democracy after Franco’s death in 1975. As king, he established a constitutional monarchy and oversaw multiple peaceful transitions of government between different political parties.

He abdicated the throne in 2014 amid health problems and revelations about his love life, opaque fortunes and lavish lifestyle. He handed power to his son, Felipe VI.

While largely admired for his role in Spain’s transition to democracy, Juan Carlos faced increasing scrutiny over his private financial dealings. He left for the United Arab Emirates in 2020 because of public outrage and accusations of financial misconduct and corruption.

He faced a series of investigations related to his personal wealth, as Spanish prosecutors probed possible tax evasion and money laundering by him and other members of the royal family. But he has not been indicted and Spain’s Supreme Court dismissed tax complaints against him in May.

Spain’s royal household has described the United Arab Emirates as his permanent residence.

Ahead of the release of his memoir, Juan Carlos gave an interview to the French newspaper Le Figaro from his home on an island near Abu Dhabi. The interview, which was published last week, described an isolated life in a tranquil villa with a swimming pool surrounded by olive trees imported from Spain.

Juan Carlos told Le Figaro he had moved far away from Spain to help his son, and so “journalists from my country couldn’t easily find me.”