Don Juan Carlos intends to attend the regattas in Sanxenxo again
MADRID, 10 Abr. (EUROPA PRESS) –
The second visit of the King emeritus to Spain since his departure into exile in August 2020 already has a date, next week, and also a destination, the Galician city of Sanxenxo from which he headed towards the United Arab Emirates at the time and to which he returned at the end of May 2022 on his first visit.
Don Juan Carlos intends to attend a Spanish Cup regatta in Sanxenxo on April 22 and 23, according to what the newspaper ‘El Mundo’ announced on Monday, which specifies that before this trip, which will last for several days , will attend a private lunch in London to which he has been invited by King Carlos III, whose coronation is scheduled for May 6.
As on the first occasion, Don Juan Carlos has taken advantage of the celebration of a regatta in the town of Pontevedra in which his boat, the ‘Bribón’, will participate, as an argument to justify his displacement to Spain, without for now from the Casa del Rey it has been indicated if this time there will also be a visit to the Palacio de la Zarzuela.
A year ago, the eleven-hour visit that he made to what had been his residence for more than five decades was the culmination of a much less discreet displacement than was expected a priori in light of his words in the letter he sent to Felipe VI to notify him that he was permanently settling in Abu Dhabi but that he intended to travel regularly to Spain, now that his judicial outlook had been cleared.
Don Juan Carlos and Don Felipe had not seen each other since the former headed for the United Arab Emirates in August 2020 and there was only public record of a telephone conversation between the two, precisely on the occasion of the trip to this Gulf country that the monarch made after the death of its president just two weeks earlier.
Father and son had “extensive conversation time”, which Zarzuela did not want to quantify, and which allowed them to discuss “family issues as well as various events and their consequences in Spanish society” since the emeritus settled in Abu Dhabi , in apparent reference to the malaise that Don Juan Carlos’s past activities had generated and that had been in the crosshairs of justice.
Subsequently, Felipe VI and the King emeritus have seen each other on two other occasions. The first of these was on the occasion of Elizabeth II’s funeral in London at the end of September. Then, the British protocol made the Kings Felipe VI and Letizia sit next to Don Juan Carlos and Doña Sofía, in the first image of all together in years.
The second also took place for another funeral, in this case that of Constantine, former king of Greece and brother of Doña Sofía. The infantas Elena and Cristina also attended with their respective children. The Kings had not coincided in a public act with the emeritus and the infantas since the funeral of the infanta Pilar, sister of Don Juan Carlos, in January 2020.
Constantino’s burial also left for the memory the images of the affectionate greeting between Don Felipe and his father, to whom he gave two kisses and a few pats on the shoulder and with whom he exchanged a few words during the ceremony that took place at the Tatoi de la Greek royal family.
Regardless of whether a family reunion in Zarzuela finally takes place again, where on the previous visit there was also a lunch attended by Queen Letizia, the Infanta Sofía, the Queen emeritus as well as the Infanta Elena and her two children and the Infanta Margarita , sister of the emeritus, and her husband, Carlos Zurita, it remains to be seen how the stay in Sanxenxo goes and if this time he opts for a low profile.
Although in his letter to Felipe VI of March 2022, the King emeritus conveyed his will that his trips to Spain take place in the “private sphere”, the truth is that his first visit was marked by the opposite, with a minute follow-up of all the trips and a great expectation wherever he went.
Perhaps for this reason, from Zarzuela he was reminded before returning to Abu Dhabi that his decision “to organize his personal life and his place of residence in private areas, both during his visits and if he were to reside in Spain again in the future, to continue enjoying as much privacy as possible.”
The message apparently permeated the former monarch, since although his entourage had initially anticipated that he would return to Spain a few weeks later, again for the regattas, that visit did not take place and in fact he had to wait almost a year for it to materialize.