Spain’s former King Juan Carlos reveals for first time how he shot and killed his brother when they were teenagers

Spain‘s exiled king Juan Carlos I has revealed for the first time how he shot and killed his younger brother when they were teenagers. 

The former royal, who now lives in Dubai, published his 500-page memoirs this week, in which he wrote about the death of Alfonso nearly 70 years ago.

Juan Carlos admits to readers that for decades, ‘I didn’t like to talk about it, and this is the first time I do’. 

In the book, published in France under the title ‘Juan Carlos I d’Espagne: Réconciliation’, the 87-year-old seeks to mend relations with his estranged son, Spain’s King Felipe VI, and confront painful memories from his past.

He recounts the traumatic incident that occurred in his childhood, when the brothers were ‘playing’ with a pistol as teenagers at their family’s home in Portugal in 1956.

‘I will not recover from this tragedy. Its gravity will accompany me forever,’ Juan Carlos wrote. 

The episode is narrated in a chapter of just two pages titled ‘The Tragedy’, where the former monarch explained that the pistol’s magazine had been removed so he had thought it posed no danger. 

‘We had taken out the magazine. We had no idea there was a bullet left in the chamber,’ he wrote.

‘A shot was fired into the air, the bullet ricocheted and struck my brother squarely in the forehead. He died in our father’s arms.’

At the time, there was no judicial inquiry into the circumstances of the firearms accident.

Juan Carlos, then aged 18, and Alfonso, aged 14, had been apparently playing with a Star Bonifacio Echeverria automatic pistol, owned by the younger brother. 

As the pair were playing alone in a room, it has always remained unclear how Alfonso was killed. 

One of Princess María de las Mercedes’s dressmakers claimed at the time that Juan Carlos aimed the pistol at Alfonso and shot, without realising it was loaded. 

But other sources have alleged that the bullet ricocheted, or a door knocked the former king’s arm, causing him to inadvertently shoot his brother.

Another story claims that Juan Carlos, who was home for Easter from his strict military school, had been cleaning a revolver he had been given by Francisco Franco when he shot his brother. 

Their father, the Count of Barcelona, reportedly grabbed him by the neck and bellowed at him furiously: ‘Swear to me that you didn’t do it on purpose!’

Juan de Borbón proceeded to cover the body of Alfonso in a Spanish flag and later threw the pistol into the sea. 

Juan Carlos was sent back to his austere military academy – his relationship with his father in tatters. 

‘There is a before and an after,’ Juan Carlos wrote, reflecting on the event.

‘It is still difficult for me to speak of it, and I think of it every day … I miss him; I wish I could have him by my side and talk with him. 

‘I lost a friend, a confidant. He left me with an immense emptiness. Without his death, my life would have been less dark, less unhappy.’

The book, divided into seven parts, will be published in Spanish in December, to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the death of Franco and the restoration of the monarchy.

French author and historian Laurence Debray, who moved to Abu Dhabi and spent two years interviewing Juan Carlos in French to compile the book, called it ‘quite explicit’ in its revelations. 

Juan Carlos abdicated in 2014 in favour of his son amid a storm of controversy,  surrounding extramarital affairs and suspicions about financial corruption.

His fall from grace can be traced back to 2012, when details emerged about him embarking on an elephant-hunting trip in Botswana with his former mistress Corinna Larsen, as Spain suffered an economic crisis.

King Felipe VI, his successor, has not invited his father to the official ceremony to mark the anniversary on November 21.

Juan Carlos was born in Rome in 1938, amid his family’s exile and the bloody Spanish Civil War, which led to Franco’s rise to power. 

Groomed by the feared dictator to replace him, Juan Carlos’s childhood and adolescence was ‘appalling’, according to his British biographer Professor Paul Preston.

‘I think it explains a lot. The privations of his childhood and adolescence might well count for some of the avarice shall we say, the urge to collect money in one way or another,’ he told the podcast Corinna and the King.

In his book, Juan Carlos recounts the moment that dictator Franco summoned him to anoint him as his heir.

‘One day Franco summoned me to his office. I knew nothing. He told me bluntly: “I am going to name you my successor as king. Do you accept?”

‘I was stunned; I thought of my father. I asked whether I could have time to think, but he expected an answer quickly. I was caught between a rock and a hard place. Silence reigned; I could hear only my own breathing. I accepted – as a duty and an obligation. Did I have another choice?’

Reigning as the King of Spain from 1975, for nearly three decades the popular Juan Carlos was able to keep the more seedy details of his private life out of the spotlight.

He had a close relationship with Queen Elizabeth and the British royal family, with one photograph showing him chatting to the late Princess Diana as a young Prince William sat between his legs.

But before long, the monarch found himself in numerous scandals surrounding extramarital affairs while he remained married to Queen Sofia – although the pair had allegedly not shared a bed since the late 1970s.

On the subject of his illicit lovers, Spanish author Amadeo Martinez Ingles claimed he slept with 62 women in just one six-month stint, and allegedly bedded more than 2,000 female partners between 1976 and 1994.

It was his hunting trip in 2012 with the German-Danish aristocrat Corinna that finally led to his downfall.

The Spanish nation was enraged that their monarch had embarked on a lavish holiday costing an estimated £35,000 when the country was going through a terrible recession and youth unemployment stood at 50 per cent.

In August 2020, six years after his abdication, Juan Carlos opted to leave Spain, saying he did not want his personal affairs to undermine his son’s reign. 

Earlier that year, King Felipe VI stripped his father of an annual allowance of nearly 200,000 euros as details of his financial dealings emerged.

And Spain’s Supreme Court had launched an investigation into his alleged involvement in a high-speed rail contract in Saudi Arabia in a case that has now been dropped.

Two years ago, a €145m (£128m) legal case brought by his former lover Corinna for alleged harassment was thrown out by a London court.

Concluding his memoirs, Juan Carlos wrote: ‘I know I may have disappointed some … I have acknowledged that in these pages. I am no saint. Power has not stifled my personality, which I have never hidden … I do not know whether the sacrifice of leaving Spain is useful or properly appreciated. It has changed me greatly as a man.’