Yet another scandal has hit the Spanish monarchy. After the news last week that former king Juan Carlos I had received 1.7 million euros from the Sultan of Bahrain while he was Spain's head of state, new revelations keep on emerging about the relationship between the king emeritus and this Persian Gulf monarchy.
In fact, the private relationship between Juan Carlos and Bahrain's royal house - the institution responsible for bloody repression of protests against the monarchy in 2011 - has been long and intense. The digital newspaper Vanitatis asserts that the father of Spain's current king has made six private trips to the oil-rich Gulf country since he abdicated in 2014.
Since then, Juan Carlos has been a frequent guest in Arab monarchies with dubious respect for human rights, having journeyed three times to Saudi Arabia, three more to the UAE, as well as the six visits to Bahrain, where, in his public time, he visited institutions such as the National Museum and the National Theatre.
Moreover, the visits were reciprocal. In September 2019, king Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa of Bahrain made a brief private visit to Madrid to check on the Spanish king emeritus's health.
Juan Carlos was seen with king Hamad in Manama, the capital of Bahrain, but the pair also met in Abu Dhabi (UAE), to attend the Formula 1 grand prix there. In fact, on one of these motor racing trips, the retired Spanish monarch had no objections to greeting Saudi crown prince Mohamed bin Salman, considered the intellectual author of the October 2018 assassination of Saudi dissident Jamal Khashoggi.
In March this year, Swiss newspaper Tribune de Genève revealed that prosecutors were investigating a bank account in the former Spanish king's name which contained about 100 million euros, allegedly a gift from the Saudi royal house. The 1.7 million euros which are now known to have come from Bahrain - also allegedly a gift to Juan Carlos from the leader of the Gulf state - were delivered by the Spanish king to his Swiss bank in cash.