It's the first time, but it won't be the last. King Juan Carlos returns to Spain today for the first time this year in which he plans to make periodic visits, almost every month, in order to participate in the regattas and maintain contact with his friends. This Wednesday, after visiting his doctors in Vitoria, he lands in Vigo to go to Sanxenxo (Pontevedra) where he will remain until Sunday. The King's father has traveled from Geneva, a city that he has been regularly visiting lately, to Vitoria Gasteiz airport, on a private flight from the VistaJet company, owned by the father-in-law of Prince Philippos of Greece; After his medical examination, he will continue his trip to Galicia.
The trip occurs two weeks after the meeting of King Juan Carlos with his son, the King, at the mass in memory of Constantine of Greece that was held in Windsor (England) where he was able to capture a photo of both of them together, and arm in arm. .
Juan Carlos made a technical stop in Vitoria, to visit one of his doctors, Dr. Eduardo Anitua, who was among the guests at the party for his 86th birthday that was celebrated in Abu Dhabi on January 5. At night he will be in Sanxenxo, residing as usual at the house of Pedro Campos, president of the yacht club of the Galician town where the first round of the Spanish regatta championship will be held this weekend, if the weather does not prevent it. of class 6M. The next tests are scheduled for April 20 and 21; May 17, 18 and 18; June 14, 15 and 16; July 12, 13, 14 and September 27, 28 and 29. The first week of October, in Sanxenxo, the European championship will be held and the nautical events will conclude with a final weekend of regattas between November 15 and 17. He plans to attend all the events and participate as much as possible. of his physical possibilities, King Juan Carlos.
Since he went into self-exile in Abu Dhabi, after leaving Spain in the summer of 2020, it took King Juan Carlos a year and a half to return and he did so to return to Sanxenxo, the last city he was in before leaving Spain with the intention, initially, to return in a few months. The information about his alleged fiscal irregularities generated political and social pressure in which there was no other way out than to leave the country. Months earlier, King Felipe VI himself had withdrawn the allocation that his father received from the budgets of the King's House and, at the same time, had renounced a future inheritance, implying that there were suspicions about the origin of the possible fortune of the king. King Juan Carlos.
The first visit of King Juan Carlos to Spain, which took place between April 19 and 23, 2022, did not meet the expected requirements of discretion and privacy and only fueled the controversy over the actions of the previous head. of the State in the last years of his reign. The trip concluded with an hours-long visit to the Zarzuela, where the King asked him to avoid media exposure in the future. In September 2022, the first photo of the King was taken with his father, King Juan Carlos, when both, along with Queen Letizia and Queen Sofía, sat together at the funeral for Queen Isabel II that was officiated. in Westminster Abbey, London. Months later, in January, they would meet again in Athens at the funeral and burial of Constantine of Greece.
Last year, after the fiasco of his first visit to Sanxenxo, King Juan Carlos tried to give discretion to his visits and achieved a certain normalization in his four visits to Sanxenxo (in April, July, September and October) and also traveled two times more to Madrid. The first, not without controversy, had the objective of attending the family celebration for Princess Leonor's 18th birthday on October 31 that took place in El Pardo, although she was not present at any of the institutional events. On December 20, she returned to celebrate, in a restaurant in Madrid, the 60th birthday of Infanta Elena, who managed to seat her father and her brother at the same table.
On February 27, on the occasion of the celebration in St. George's Chapel at Windsor Castle, there was a meeting between the King and his father, in which both of them could be seen together and, for the first time, arm in arm. after Felipe VI offered his arm so that King Juan Carlos could support himself when walking. The cordiality and family closeness does not mean, however, that the King's situation will change in the short term and his separation from any institutional activity is maintained, as well as the prohibition of residing in publicly owned residences, which includes the palace of the Zarzuela.
King Juan Carlos, as he officially announced on January 23, 2023, will continue his residence in Abu Dhabi, although, in recent months, he has multiplied his trips to Geneva, where his daughter Infanta Cristina lives, so it is not known. He rules out that in the future he will alternate his residence in the Emirates with long stays in Switzerland.
