Spain’s King Juan Carlos I is being sued by an ex-mistress over a £50m ‘gift’ writes JANE FRYER 

With the state funeral of our beloved Queen upon us, King Charles and his fractured family will be bracing themselves for one more show of solidarity. A united front before the cameras. A new beginning, we all hope and pray, for the House of Windsor.

Which is more than can be hoped for the beleaguered Spanish royal family, for whom the funeral has caused a right old logistical hoo-ha.

In short: King Juan Carlos I — Spain’s disgraced former monarch who abdicated in 2014 and, since 2020, has been living in the UAE in self-imposed exile under a cloud of shame — has accepted an invitation to today’s service. But so has his estranged son and successor, King Felipe VI, and his wife Queen Letizia.

Which all presents more than just a tricky seating arrangement issue for those in charge at Westminster Abbey. Indeed, an eyebrow or two has been raised at the decision to invite Juan Carlos at all, regardless of his status as distant cousin of the late Queen.

The 84-year-old former king has spent the past few years steeped in scandals involving everything from a tax rumpus to accepting kickbacks, accusations of embezzlement and rumours of extremely energetic philandering.

Even now, he’s limbering up for a hearing in London’s High Court, where he’s being sued by a former mistress, the impossibly glamorous blonde German-Danish aristocrat Corinna zu Sayn-Wittgenstein-Sayn, 58, who claims he intimidated and threatened her in the hope of persuading her to return a £50 million ‘gift’. Something he strenuously denies.

On top of that, a new three-part HBO Max series — Saving The King — has just been aired, involving more than 50 first-person interviews with journalists, politicians, ex-secret agents and an ex-lover.

And, from the looks of it, they all reveal far more than Juan Carlos would like about his lust for money, power, big game hunting and, perhaps most of all, women.

Take his longish-term relationship with the late Queca Campillo, a beautiful Spanish photographer. They met on a job, he phoned later that evening saying simply, ‘Do you know who I am?’, and that was that.

Not that it was always easy — after all, he’s been married to Queen Sofia since 1962.

‘We had nowhere to meet,’ explains Queca in recorded material. ‘So I’d go to the back entrance of the royal residence [the Zarzuela Palace] and meet in a car — in a van they had.’ In the back of a van! With the king!?

Even now, he’s limbering up for a hearing in London’s High Court, where he’s being sued by a former mistress, the impossibly glamorous blonde German-Danish aristocrat Corinna zu Sayn-Wittgenstein-Sayn, 58 (pictured)

Undoubtedly, there were a LOT of women. Some were fleeting. Others were more meaningful. Notable amongst them: an encounter with Maria Gabriella of Savoy, daughter of the last king of Italy; and Liliane Sartiau, a Belgian governess whose daughter later claimed to be his. While just weeks after he was crowned king of Spain, in 1975, his wife reportedly walked in on him in a highly compromising position with Spanish actress and singer, Sara Montiel.

But this was just the tip of the sexual iceberg. In his book, Juan Carlos I: The King Of 5,000 Lovers, Spanish author Amadeo Martinez Ingles claims the king had 62 lovers in a one six-month stint alone and, during his ‘passionate period’, between 1976 and 1994, slept with 2,154 women.

Most shocking, in evidence given to a parliamentary hearing in 2021, ex-police chief Jose Manuel Villarejo claimed that the former king had been given testosterone blockers by the Spanish secret service after his libido was categorised as a ‘state problem’.

If philandering had been his only fault, however, the Spanish people might have been able to simply put it down to him being a sex addict and turn a blind eye.

But the murky financial dealings that later emerged — and are covered in the HBO series in forensic detail — were just too much.

There was also a corruption investigation over vast sums of money gifted by Saudi Arabia, all sloshing around in obscure Swiss bank accounts, but the case was eventually dropped. His daughter’s husband, Inaki Urdangarin, was sentenced to almost six years in prison on charges including graft, tax evasion, and embezzlement.

Not forgetting those horrible — and horribly expensive — big-game hunting trips he loved so much. He particularly enjoyed shooting bears — in 2004, he killed nine in central Romania, one of which was pregnant. But it was an elephant-shooting trip in Botswana, in 2012, accompanied by his lover, that eventually did for him.

The trip only became public after he broke his hip and had to be flown home for treatment. Officials were at pains to insist that the estimated £35,000 cost of the trip had not been met by the taxpayer, but by Mohamed Eyad Kayali, a Syrian-Spanish businessman.

Juan Carlos’s estranged son and successor, King Felipe VI, and his wife Queen Letizia also accepted an invitation to today’s service (pictured arriving for the reception at Buckingham Palace on Sunday evening)

Yet the damage was done — the cost was twice the average salary in Spain at a time of terrible recession and 50 per cent unemployment among the young. And the ensuing backlash marked the end of any leeway he’d been given by the media.

Two years later, to save the monarchy and citing personal reasons, he abdicated in favour of his son, who acceded to the throne as Felipe VI — taking an unkind swipe at Prince Charles on the way out.

‘We do not want my son to wither waiting like Prince Charles,’ snapped the departing King.

The shame, of course, is that Juan Carlos could have gone down in history as a great leader and visionary. In the early days of his reign, he had been revered for his role in the country’s transition to democracy and restoring the monarchy, overseeing a period of change and development for Spain.

But his need for power, money and women got the better of him.

He’d been born in exile in Italy where his grandfather Alfonso XIII had fled in 1931 and only arrived in Spain when he was nine years old and Franco was in power. Back then, there were no great riches or fancy trappings.

He was also a bit of a loner, struggled with dyslexia and was ostracised from his family after killing his younger brother, Alfonso, 14, in 1956, in a shocking accident with a revolver.

Two days after making him swear on his country that he hadn’t done it on purpose, his father Don Juan sent him back to an austere military academy. Their relationship never really recovered.

 The 84-year-old former king (centre) has spent the past few years steeped in scandals involving everything from a tax rumpus to accepting kickbacks, accusations of embezzlement and rumours of extremely energetic philandering

Ambitious and focused, he secretly courted Franco and leapfrogged his father to the throne. Not one of his immediate family attended his 1975 coronation.

Perhaps it was little wonder, then, that he wanted nothing more than financial security and physical company.

At first, it all looked so promising. He was fantastically popular. Spain was on the up, with a massive boom in tourism and construction and, after they joined the Common Market, investment.

Which is perhaps why no one bothered to question how, despite an apparent lack of assets — royal estates, palaces and art collections were owned by the state — he maintained his family’s increasingly opulent lifestyle. (Though his ever-deepening friendships with Middle Eastern countries were perhaps a clue.)

It helped, of course, that for decades the entire machinery of the state cleaned up after him and protected him from his own acts and scandals, the Press was gagged and, much more importantly, in Spain, the king can legally do no wrong — immune, unaccountable and inviolable.

And the richer he became, the more the lines became blurred. Public funds that should have been spent on fighting terrorism and organised crime were dished out to disgruntled lovers.

More than 100 million pesetas (around £525,000 today) were paid into an offshore account for a showgirl and Spain’s 1971 Miss World candidate named Barbara Rey, to keep her quiet about a long-standing romance.

She was also given a prime-time Saturday night TV show which she introduced in a tight-red corset, promising ‘music, humour, artists, attractions and much more’ and, later, her own cookery show.

An eyebrow or two has been raised at the decision to invite Juan Carlos at all, regardless of his status as distant cousin of the late Queen. Pictured together at Windsor Palace in 1986

Juan Carlos seemed to have few boundaries, discussing matters of state in bed and openly giving his opinion on the politicians of the time. He particularly loathed Jose Maria Aznar, the diminutive Prime Minister of the People’s Party who was in power from 1996 to 2004, and publicly ridiculed him as ‘the midget’.

Clearly, he just didn’t care. He set up some lovers in grand Spanish houses and partied with others in Mallorca. And there’s no question he was always poised for a quickie.

Rumour had it, he even had a pop at a 25-year-old Princess Diana. She denied anything untoward happened, but did admit that, while he was ‘charming’, he could be a ‘little too attentive’.

Among the few celebrities he can still count as a friend is British TV presenter Selina Scott. And, although discreet Selina has always kept quiet, the pair did reportedly have a ball during two weeks filming together for a documentary back in 1992. Last week she described him as ‘a passionate man, handsome and lots of fun, with a refreshing world view’.

Amazingly, for all his appalling behaviour, in November 2005 and according to a poll in Spanish newspaper El Mundo, nearly 80 per cent of the country thought Juan Carlos was ‘good or very good’.

But his popularity fell drastically soon after.

The eventual unravelling can be linked back to when he met and fell madly in love with German-Danish bombshell Corinna zu Sayn-Wittgenstein-Sayn in 2004 — who used to organise hunting trips and was close to the flashy international elite that he so loved. 

Yet he couldn’t even stay faithful to her and, in the end, she broke off the romantic side of their relationship — but, of course, still accepted the £50 million payment supposedly gifted out of ‘gratitude and love’ and the hope of winning her back, and which they’re now arguing about.

In June 2020, Spain’s Supreme Court launched an investigation into Juan Carlos’s alleged involvement in a high-speed rail contract in Saudi Arabia.

While he denied any wrongdoing and insisted he was available if prosecutors needed to interview him, in August of that year, he travelled to the UAE where he has lived since.

This year, all the charges against him were dropped due to insufficient evidence and the statute of limitations. Handily, the Spanish courts ruled that he cannot be prosecuted for any action taken while he was on the throne.

But the harassment action brought in the UK court by Corinna rumbles on.

In the meantime, this rather shameless distant cousin of our late Queen will be dusting off his finery for today’s final farewell where, once again, he will rub shoulders with the world’s great and good.