Juan Carlos I has denied a story published by ‘El Confidencial’ in which the newspaper reports that he has a secret daughter named Alejandra. The publication says that it has learned from sources close to the King emeritus, that, in addition to Cristina and Elena, he had a third daughter in the 1970s with a Spanish aristocrat.
The information appears in a book written by journalists José María Olmo and David Fernández entitled ‘King Corp. The never-before-seen empire of Juan Carlos I’. For more than three years, according to Olmo, the pair have investigated the financial assets, businesses and friends of the emeritus and, in the process, the have discovered the existence of Alejandra, even though she has never claimed any type of succession right to Juan Carlos I.
Olmo downplays the former head of state’s denial and wonders what the emeritus would have said if, four years ago, someone had asked him if he had money secreted away in tax havens.
In the book, of which ‘El Confidencial’ had an advanced copy, it is said that this blood relationship between Alejandra and the emeritus is something that is known by all members of the royal family, although official sources from Zarzuela have also denied the claim.
At mid-morning, barely three hours after the information was first published, the Casa del Rey press office claimed “to have no knowledge” of whether Juan Carlos I has a secret daughter named Alejandra with a spokesman suggesting that any questions about the matter be raised directly with the former king.
Dodging questions from journalists about Juan Carlos I is nothing new for Zarzuela. It has been doing so since 2019, when the monarch abandoned the crown and public life. That decision was made by Felipe VI just weeks after learning that his father had hidden money abroad, something that became publicly known a year later, in March 2020, when he announced that he would renounce the inheritance should it be left to him when his father dies. That decision was made after the foreign media outlets published details about the fortune of Juan Carlos I in tax havens.
The authors of the book do not reveal Alejandra’s last name although they do say that they have confirmed her existence through three sources of information: a former lover of Juan Carlos I, to whom he confessed his paternity; a businessman friend of the monarch and an ex-partner of the girl.
According to the investigation, the girl grew up not knowing who her father really was and, once informed, she chose to continue her previous life as part of an aristocratic family “well connected to power”.
When she found out about the bond that united her with Juan Carlos, the monarch, the journalists point out, “tried to compensate for the lack of official recognition with affection and other signs of generosity, although he never quite treated her like his other three children.”
