The protagonist wasn’t there. The celebrations of the 50th anniversary of the restoration of the monarchy in Spain, this Saturday, are marked by the paradox of the absence of the first figure to head such an institution in democracy, Juan Carlos de Borbón y Borbón, crowned on November 22, 1975 as Juan Carlos I. His son and heir, Filipe VI — who succeeded him after his abdication in 2014 — took the decision to remove his 87-year-old father from the celebrations, in response to the desire he expressed, in 2019, to withdraw from public life. In August of the following year, he went into exile in Abu Dhabi, in the United Arab Emirates.
The circumstances of this departure dictated the tone of the celebrations, which were deliberately very discreet. There was no representation from other European royal houses; military parades; large civic demonstrations. Juan Carlos’ love and financial scandals during the last years of his reign hung in the airbrought to light by the recent publication in France of his memoirs, “Reconciliation”, a book that will be released in Spain on December 3rd. The newspaper “El País”, which has always maintained an attitude of great respect towards the role of the now exiled former king, considered the publication of this book “a mistake, a colossal error”.