Former Spanish King Juan Carlos I has publicly admitted for the first time that he accidentally shot and killed his younger brother Alfonso as a teenager. The former head of the Kingdom of Spain, who currently lives in Dubai, this week published a five-hundred-page memoir in which he describes an event that took place almost seventy years ago. In the book, Juan Carlos admits to readers: “I haven’t talked about it for decades, and this is the first time I’m doing so.”
The incident occurred in 1956, when the brothers played with a gun at the family home in Portugal. Juan Carlos was then eighteen years old, while Alfonso was fourteen. “I will never recover from this tragedy. The burden of it will be with me forever.” writes Juan Carlos in the chapter entitled Tragedy.
“We removed the magazine. Little did we know there was one bullet left in the chamber. The shot flew through the air, the bullet ricocheted and hit my brother squarely in the forehead. He died in our father’s arms.” describes the former king.
There was no police investigation at the time. Some sources say that Juan Carlos aimed at his brother without knowing that the gun was loaded, others say that the bullet ricocheted or that the door hit his hand and he accidentally turned the barrel towards his brother. The truth will probably never be known, but according to all the testimonies, the brothers had a very good relationship.
Juan’s father, Don Juan of Bourbon, allegedly shouted at his son: “Swear to me you didn’t do it on purpose!” The Count of Barcelona then covered Alfonzo’s body with a Spanish flag and threw the weapon into the sea. Juan Carlos was subsequently sent to a strict military school and his relationship with his father was forever scarred.
„There is a period before and after. It’s still hard for me to talk about and I think about it every day… I miss you; I wish I could have him by my side and talk to him. I lost a friend, a confidant. He left a huge void in me. Without his death, my life would be less dark, less unhappy“, admits the former king.
Juan Carlos, known as Ján Karol, abdicated in 2014 in favor of his son, the current King Philip VI. after a series of scandals involving love affairs and financial machinations. His downfall began in 2012 when word got out that he had gone on an elephant hunting spree in Botswana with his ex-lover Corinna Larsen, while Spain faced an economic crisis and youth unemployment at 50 percent.
Juan Carlos left Spain in August 2020, six years after the abdication, so that his personal affairs would not threaten his son’s rule. King Philip VI. he was previously stripped of his annual allowance of almost 200,000 euros, and the Supreme Court opened an investigation into his alleged involvement in a contract to build a high-speed railway in Saudi Arabia.
