Juan Carlos, a royal return that bristles in Spain – Liberation

Throne fairArticle reserved for subscribers After two years of golden exile in the Emirates, the former Spanish sovereign, whose image is very degraded by multiple corruption cases, is expected this Thursday in Galicia. A return that tenses Spain and embarrasses the royal family. It is the story of a former exiled king who would like to normalize relations with his country but that the latter would like to forget. The announced return of the monarch emeritus Juan Carlos I, who reigned between 1975 and 2014, stirs the knife in the wound in the hearts of the Spaniards and highlights the complex links woven with the nation of which he was for a long time the standard bearer. The one who in August 2020 left his homeland by the back door and joined Abu Dhabi, his golden exile, in order to get away from the judicial vicissitudes of which he was the object, points the nose again: this Thursday, he is awaited for two days by the nautical club of Sanxenxo, a popular tourist port in Galicia in the summer, in order to take part in the traditional annual regatta of which it was inevitably the guest of honor until 2019. And the event made talk all over Spain. Depending on the weather conditions, he will sail – or not – on the sailboat Bribón, mediatically associated with his figure, with which he was world champion in 2017. On site, his friend the mayor Telmo Martin and the President of the Region are stamping their feet with impatience at the idea of ​​receiving their “great and dear friend”. Even if, officially, he is no longer the subject of legal proceedings, Juan Carlos I, 84, is not in the odor of holiness at home. In high places, to begin with. Embarrassed by the visit of this sulphurous personality, the socialist government speaks of a simple “private trip”. At the…