In the back seat …
If this van’s a-rockin’, don’t come a-knockin’
For Juan Carlos, the former king of Spain, the romantic setting of choice for assignations was a van parked behind his palace in Madrid, according to a new HBO series. Saving the King “reveals how the media, the royal household and successive governments covered up Juan’s affairs and his dubious business contacts,” said The Times of London. As Queca Campillo, a photographer who had met the king at an official reception, remembered in the documentary, “There is a road that leads to the back of Zarzuela [palace]. We used to meet in a van. It was difficult at a time when there were no mobile phones, but we managed. I was also married and had a little girl. I was his confidante, I told him about real life.”
Juan Carlos abdicated in 2014, and in 2020, under suspicion of money-laundering and while being investigated by the Spanish tax authorities, fled the country for parts unknown; he’s now reportedly living in the United Arab Emirates. Meanwhile, another of his former conquests, the German socialite Corinna zu Sayn-Wittgenstein-Sayn, is taking the former king to court, having accused him of “great mental pain and distress” and of dispatching agents to spy on her.
