September 26, 2024 will forever be a date remembered in the history of the Spanish monarchy. It is not every day that images as explicit as those that demonstrated, once and for all, the ‘affair’ between Juan Carlos I and Barbara Rey. Something more than an idyll, which ended up becoming a clandestine relationship, since the former monarch was still – and still is – married to Mrs. Sofia.
For example, the audios of the conversations between him and the star that have been added to the snapshots published by the Dutch magazine ‘Privé’. Until now unreleased recordings that, despite serving as a turning point to confirm a furtive romance that was no secret, do reveal many issues. At least, in those most private facet of the emeritus refers. See everything that surrounds his questioned marriage with the mother of his three children.
Natural and serene, Juan Carlos spoke with Bárbara as if she were his official partner. And between such affectionate nicknames as “my life” and “honey”, he had no qualms about opening up about his personal concerns. Without knowing, of course, that everything he told him would end up seeing the light three decades later. Without knowing that his wife would end up hearing from him everything he thought about a love that he never felt as such. Confessions about rudeness and coldness in Zarzuela that have not fallen on deaf ears.
The revealing confessions of Juan Carlos I about his marriage
In reality, it was no mystery that the marriage of Juan Carlos I and Doña Sofía had been on the rocks for a long time. It is enough to refer to the current moment, in which they do not even live in the same country, since the former head of state years ago moved his residence to Abu Dhabi, in the United Arab Emirates. The fact is that by then his life as a couple and “family” with his wife was zero. He let his lover know with a statement as emphatic as that “We haven’t been together since Felipe was born”. But there is more.
Far from avoiding mentioning the Queen, the emeritus seemed to have no qualms about getting involved when Ángel Cristo’s ex-wife asked him about the intimacies of what was happening in the palace. Without mincing words, he was honest about Sofía, whom he defined as someone who “has a very square head and she has come out very straight.” “Too much… Right?”, he asks himself, although ensuring that this determination and responsibility had been very good for him in the official field. “Between you and me, I’m going to be selfish. On the one hand, For me it is very comfortable“, he acknowledged, “because as a Queen she performs wonderfully (…) and on top of that she endures, she doesn’t leave with another.”
Does all of the above mean that they never became close and it was a purely orchestrated love? “Family life, none. In summer something else, but we don’t talk. I I never talk to her like now I talk to you“, she told the protagonist of ‘I feel strange’. Something that was different before passing through the altar in 1962, when the emeritus “was very affectionate and thinking about Spain.” A short-lived illusion that led to uncomfortable situations and a unparalleled distancing.
Because precisely in those audios in which he takes the opportunity to praise the figure of his wife within the Royal House, is where it is extracted that the private relationship was null. “I haven’t had dinner or lunch with her, I think it’s been fifteen days.. And the children are not at home,” he revealed, later pointing out that Sofía locked herself “in her room”, did not come down to dinner and “she’s angry with me”. “He doesn’t understand that I leave on Saturday and Sunday,” he added. An anger that was not a thing of one day and that lasted for the rest of her days, although Felipe VI’s father believed that the consort’s mentality “has not evolved” and believed “that one day she will return to what she was before.” “. “The other day I told her: ‘Look, this is not coming back’. (…) Because of me and her fault.” He didn’t come back.
A story to which Doña Sofía’s work team joins
“You only see her at official events,” the star snapped, perplexed at witnessing such shocking statements from the mouth of the King himself about his wife. And so it was. Everyone knew them. Including Sofia’s own team, of course. Among them José Luis, a former member of his cabinet with whom he worked for 23 years, who provided even more juicy information in an intervention for ‘Socialité’ last Saturday, October 5. “She has been able to differentiate one thing from the other,” he explained about the eternal dichotomy between personal and professional life.
In the end, being “very responsible” went above any love misadventure. “There was a certain coldness. We see it in photographs, on video, but it is logical. They didn’t sleep together, they didn’t share a room. I can’t be more explicit. I have not been in his room, but on trips each one used a different room,” he remembers about his days in the palace. “I guess will be living badly“, José Luis takes advantage of to point out how the emerita will be experiencing this new scandal, for something as simple as “it is remembering those bad moments that the entire family has experienced.”