I also get the sad impression that he was trying to recapture something of a happy family life with Corinna and her son (bbq and Botswana trip). That his marriage with Sofia had become purely official was known i get the idea that the children may have been closer to their mother leaving Juan Carlos alone except for official events.
I don't agree with the statement that Sofia has more control over Felipe than Juan Carlos. It's clear Felipe loves and respects his mother and he may have learnt from her family history but i think his wife has more influence over him than his mother. To me it's more that Sofia, Felipe and others may have felt that Juan Carlos went too far and that the only possibility to safe the institution was for him to abdicate. To be honest his health was failing making a transition a good idea just because of that fact.
As we say in Spain, he was not thinking with his brain, but with another organ of his body.
The picture is stunning. What do you think happened to the King? Did he just give up at some point?
Yes. The interview has been published in the Spanish media. But her conspiracy theory has been mocked by everybody. Nobody has paid attention to it.
What has shocked the whole country is the picture of the BBQ King. Terrible. No words to describe it.
https://www.semana.es/casas-reales/familia-real-espanola/polemica-foto-rey-juan-carlos-barbacoa-hijo-corinna-20200918-002265760/
The article is behind a paywall, but the gist of it is that Corinna zu Sayn-Wittgenstein has given an interview to Paris Match in which she claims that the former king was the victim of a coup d'etat led by Queen Sofia. The article reports that 'Ms Sayn-Wittgenstein says Juan Carlos told her: “I have two fronts against me. The first is made up of my wife and her lieutenants: she is in a hurry to put her son on the throne because she has much more influence over him than me. The second is embodied by Mariano Rajoy, whose objective is to castrate me and weaken the monarchy."' https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/09/18/disgraced-former-king-spain-victim-coup-detat-led-estranged/
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