After three days in Sanxenxo, King Juan Carlos heads to Madrid today to meet Felipe VI before returning to Abu Dhabi. With this visit to La Zarzuela, the father of the head of state hopes to normalize his presence in Spain and that his next visits – the next one in just three weeks – will not arouse so much expectation and he can be a citizen with free movement, without his trips throwing up criticism from government parties towards the Crown or former vice presidents.
“I have come here to normalize everything,” Don Juan Carlos has said on several occasions to his friends in Sanxenxo. Although the King has wanted to facilitate the work of the press these days and has not hidden, his responses have been limited to talking about the sailing days and stating that he was “very well”. Taking care that no statement made provoked the anger of La Zarzuela or La Moncloa, because the situation is not easy.
Because this trip of Don Juan Carlos to Spain takes place on his own initiative. And although the version of Zarzuela is that the father of Felipe VI could come whenever he wanted, and La Moncloa discharged all responsibility to the Crown, the truth is that his return to Spain was the result of arduous negotiations between some people he trusted and the team of Felipe VI. The call from his son a week ago from Abu Dhabi, in which he summoned her to see him when he came to Madrid, accelerated all Don Juan Carlos’s plans. It was that conversation that decided him to return to Spain four days later. And instead of going through Madrid first, where he cannot spend the night, he chose to meet his friends in Sanxenxo.
As EL MUNDO has learned, at half past eight in the morning Juan Carlos I will leave Pedro Campos’ house for the Vigo airport. There he will take a flight that will probably land at Torrejón Airport. The place where Don Juan Carlos arrived on so many occasions in official planes will receive him this Monday like any citizen who travels in a private plane and is referred to that airport, a common landing strip for so-called air taxis. From there, a vehicle will take you to the Palacio de la Zarzuela, which was his home for half a century and now welcomes you as a guest.
Casa Real has conceived this meeting as a private matter between father and son. As the King Emeritus is a person retired from public life since 2019, they have decided that the reunion with Don Felipe, Doña Sofía and other members of the family does not deserve, at least for now, to transcend the public. That is why La Zarzuela did not include it in the King’s institutional agenda, because it is a personal commitment.
Although it was the House that reported through an official statement that Don Juan Carlos would visit La Zarzuela today, at the moment they do not plan to give more information about the act. It is unlikely that it will be known, at least from official sources, how the meeting will take place and who will visit the King Emeritus in La Zarzuela. The idea of not distributing photos of the visit of Don Juan Carlos is also handled. On other occasions of a private nature, such as Doña Leonor’s school start in Wales, snapshots were distributed.
The King Father will arrive at what was his house after eleven in the morning. There he will meet his family, have an early lunch and around four in the afternoon he will head back to the airport to travel back to Abu Dhabi. Don Juan Carlos has lamented among his entourage the short time that he is going to remain in La Zarzuela. “It seems more like a procedure than a family reunion,” explained one of those who have been with the King Father all weekend in Sanxenxo, lamenting that his return to La Zarzuela “seems somewhat clandestine.”
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