[ad_1]
– For you young people, it is very difficult to understand. Before, a gift was not seen as corruption. Now it is like that, but then a gift of 100 million euros was a gift.
Pepe Oliver makes a little fun of how suffocating and politically correct Spain has become in 2020. For decades, Pepe Oliver, now 77, was Palma’s “king of nightlife”. The yacht club where he ran the nightclub and was a public relations manager was the ideal place in the 1970s.
Palma’s yacht club is still the port for some of the largest ships in the Mediterranean and for the wealthiest people.
Photo: Philip Lote / NRK
The “dangerous entourage”
One of those who was in the yacht club was the young prince Juan Carlos. Another was his childhood friend, Prince Zourab Tchokotoua.
The first was the prince whom the dictator Franco had appointed to rule Spain after him. The other a prince of a Russian-Georgian nobility. Zourab Tchokotoua would never inherit a country or royal power. Instead, he invested a lot of money in real estate and a lot of time in people and contacts, especially in Mallorca.
See the photo gallery of the Tchokotoua family:
Photo gallery – Tchkotoua family
They were young, rich, charming, outgoing men. Prince Zourab Tchokotoua’s wife was Marieta Salas de Palma. She was one of the best friends of King Pepe Oliver. Through Marieta Salas, Pepe Oliver became the party planner for the two princes.
Pepe Oliver with the Yacht Club marina in the background. Most things here look the same as before, says Oliver.
Photo: Philip Lote / NRK
The voice is deep and shaky. She leans on a crutch while she shows us the Yacht Club. Pepe Oliver never gives interviews until after lunch. What in Spain does not mean until 5:00 p.m.
– Everyone who was famous and important was here every night. Her Majesty’s best friends and best friends were, of course, the friends of Marieta Salas and Zourab Tchokotoua. I myself have a very beautiful wife and she was very important at that time. The women in our group, as you could see everywhere, were very beautiful. That was important.
– They called us the “dangerous entourage”, says Pepe Oliver, halfway with a smile, halfway with a nostalgic sigh.
The king of acquaintances
Juan Carlos was good at relating and talking to all kinds of people. In summer, Palma was the place where he liked to take visitors. Here came Lady Diana and the First Lady of the United States, Michelle Obama.
The networks that built the king’s position for decades were linked to Mallorca.
The kings of navigation. King Harald and King Juan Carlos laugh during the 1998 Copa del Rey regatta in Palma.
Photo: A. MILLAN / NTB / Scanpix
It has never stopped influencing the life of King Juan Carlos. In the 1970s, Prince Spain had the future of Spain in his hands. If you want to take Spain in one direction or another. It was between democracy or dictatorship.
Behind the back of General Franco, the young prince Juan Carlos spoke with those who wanted another Spain.
Prince Juan Carlos gained the trust of the dictator Franco at the same time that he discussed the future of Spain with those who wanted a different and populated Spain.
Photo: Afp
These were leaders of both Franco’s own nationalist movement and the until recently illegal opposition. Twice the king chose democracy. First time after Franco’s death. The second time when a group of former officers of the dictator attempted to seize power on behalf of the king on February 23, 1981.
To this day, it is unknown at this time what he will do after leaving office. The last convulsion of the Franco regime ended in humiliations.
Soldiers loyal to democracy guard the National Assembly in the days after the failed coup attempt in February 1981.
Photo: Ap
In recent years, stories of monetary gifts, lovers, and lack of contact with ordinary Spaniards have weakened his exalted status as the great “king of the people.”
Princess Sofia of Greece and Denmark showed little about the challenges that would come when she married Prince Juan Carlos in Athens in 1962.
Photo: NTB / Scanpix
A royal house in crisis
More and more supporters of the Spanish monarchy began to view the old king as a risk.
– What happens then? The elite, politics, the economy and sectors of the media in Spain come together and ask “what are we doing to save the monarchy?” It is no longer about King Juan Carlos, but about what will happen to the monarchy if suddenly his great figure is completely discredited. With this, the operation begins for the king to abdicate and hand over the throne to his son Felipe VI, says David Jiménez, author and former editor of the liberal-conservative newspaper El Mundo.
In 2014, Juan Carlos steps aside. His youngest son with Queen Sofia, his son Felipe becomes king.
The royal family welcomes the people from the balcony of the castle in Madrid on June 19, 2014. The day that King Felipe took the throne from his father, who signed his own abdication.
Photo: GERARD JULIEN / Afp
New prosecutor
The latest and most serious accusation so far is that the former king has received 100 million euros from Saudi Arabia to secure favorable agreements with Spanish high-speed train manufacturers.
It is said that he transferred the money to his Danish lover Corinna Larsen zu Sayn-Wittgenstein.
Former King Juan Carlos I with his Danish lover Corinna Larsen zu Sayn-Wittgenstein during a ceremony in Barcelona in 2006.
Photo: MPH / MEGA / Mega
Exile
Juan Carlos was born in exile. Now the question is whether it will also disappear from the Spanish public in exile.
On August 3, rumors began that the old king had left the country. For two weeks he was silent. The Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez, is silent and when he visits King Felipe in Palma, he says that it is not right for him to comment on the internal affairs of the royal family. However, there is no doubt that both, after the rumors started, intense conversations took place between King Felipe and the Spanish government.
So on August 17 a message came from the Royal Palace in Madrid that the former King Juan Carlos was staying in the United Arab Emirates.
– It has become a very heavy burden for your son, Felipe VI. In fact, there is a side to this story that the media often misses. It’s the personal side. The king has been ordered to deal with this matter with his father. He has had to cut ties with his father. He has taken away the allowance and salary that his father received. He has renounced the millionaire legacy he may have received because he clearly believes the money is illegal, says David Jiménez.
The former editor believes that Juan Carlos enjoyed protection for many years that was unhealthy, not for Spain and perhaps not for the king himself..
David Jiménez was the editor of El Mundo and now writes regular columns for the New York Times in English and Spanish.
Photo: Philip Lote / NRK
– What was perhaps a mistake was to give him absolute impunity for almost 40 years just for making a gesture in favor of democracy.
When he resigned as director of El Mundo, David Jiménez wrote a book on politics, economic interests and the media in Spain.
The book shook the power elite in Spain and has given David Jiménez many enemies. Two chapters deal with the game and the interaction between the royal house and the richest and most powerful in Spain.
“El Director”, David Jiménez’s book about his time as editor of El Mundo, was politically explosive when it was published in 2019. Now the book will also be a television series produced by one of the main streaming services.
Photo: Philip Lote / NRK
Elephant hunting
The fall of King Juan Carlos begins after an elephant hunt in Botswana. A hunting accident in which the king was injured reached the press.
When Juan Carlos was forced to resign as president of the World Wilderness Fund in Spain, it was also the first step towards abdication as king.
– The Botswana accident was clearly the beginning of the end. Not only because he hunted elephants with his mistress in Botswana, but because of the economic crisis that Spain was going through at that time, Jiménez believes.
– Unemployment in Spain was higher than 25 percent. Many lost their homes. In the midst of this situation, our head of state, the king we admired so much, enjoyed an exclusive trip with his lover paid for by an Arab dictatorship, he says.
In recent years, it has been more demanding to maintain a common appearance for the royal family. This image is from the Easter Mass in Palma in April 2014. By then it had already been decided that King Juan Carlos would resign.
Photo: JAIME REINA / Afp
Missing the old times
In Palma, Pepe Oliver misses the old days and the long nights when his best friends were still young. He thinks that people forget what the old king did for Spain and say that what he did for Spain, in the case of Mallorca, can be worth ten times.
She uses a few words about her son King Philip.
– To give you an idea of what King Juan Carlos meant for Mallorca. He visited a restaurant and the next day the place was full of people. He didn’t mind greeting the journalists … “a photo?” a photo, all ok ». This does not happen with King Philip. It rarely goes anywhere, and if it does, no one will go there.
