* King criticised for poor example at time of crisis
* King’s son-in-law linked to corruption probe in December
* Second accident in a week for royal family
By Julien Toyer
MADRID, April 15 (Reuters) – Spain’s King Juan Carlos I came
under intense media fire on Sunday for hunting elephants in
Botswana when his country was being sucked back into the euro
zone’s financial crisis and one young Spaniard out of two was
unemployed.
Spanish media pointed to the cost of his trip and criticised
the lack of transparency of the Royal Household, three months
after it promised to disclose its income following a corruption
probe linked to the king’s son-in-law.
The royal holiday last week would have remained secret if
the king had not tripped on a step, fractured his hip and had to
be flown back urgently to Madrid to undergo hip replacement
surgery on Saturday morning.
Juan Carlos called on Spanish leaders in his annual
Christmas message to set a good example and, more recently, he
said there were times when he could not sleep because of concern
about Spain’s youth unemployment problem.
Last week he cancelled his regular weekly meeting with Prime
Minister Mariano Rajoy because he had already left for Botswana,
several newspapers said.
“It was an irresponsible trip, taken at the worst possible
moment,” the daily El Mundo said in an editorial. “The image of
a monarch hunting elephants in Africa at a time when the
economic crisis in our country creates so many problems for the
Spanish people is a very poor example.”
Most Spanish dailies and TV channels on Sunday showed a
picture of the king in front of a dead elephant, taken on a
similar trip to Botswana in 2006.
The picture drew many internet and Twitter comments, some
linking it to a Russian hunting trip in 2006 when the king was
reported to have killed a bear which had been made drunk.
News of the king’s latest trip came at a time when Spain’s
political leaders face growing social anger. Support for Rajoy
fell sharply in April after his government announced deep
spending cuts and health and education reforms to fight the
sovereign debt crisis, an opinion poll showed on Sunday.
“BITTEREST YEAR”
ABC newspaper said it was Juan Carlos’s “bitterest year”
since he came to the throne and became head of state shortly
after the death in 1975 of dictator Francisco Franco.
The king, who oversaw the country’s tense transition to
democracy, won respect from many Spaniards in 1981 when he
publicly condemned an attempted coup.
He has remained very popular, though a poll in October
showed that the Spanish people’s trust in the royal family was
declining.
The monarchy was also criticised in December when Inaki
Urdangarin, the husband of the king’s youngest daughter
Cristina, was charged in a fraud and embezzlement case.
A separate accident also drew media attention to the royal
family on Monday, when Felipe Juan Froilan, the 13-year-old son
of the king’s eldest daughter Infanta Elena, accidentally shot
himself in the foot with a shotgun during target practice
outside a family home north of Madrid.
The incident reminded older Spaniards of a more serious
royal shooting accident in 1956 when King Juan Carlos’s
14-year-old brother, Alfonso, died at the royal family’s home.
The palace said at the time that Alfonso was killed by a
bullet in the head when a revolver he was cleaning went off
accidentally, but historians have questioned the official
version of events.
The king, a keen sailor, has had at least five hunting and
skiing accidents in the past, some requiring surgery. He also
had a lung operation in 2010 and knee and foot surgery in 2011.
Rajoy, who visited the king on Sunday, said he would resume
his duties gradually and would attend their weekly meeting next
Friday. “I saw him being very upbeat. He will recover very soon
and resume his usual duties,” Rajoy told journalists outside
Madrid’s San Jose hospital where the king was being treated.
(Reporting by Julien Toyer; Editing by Tim Pearce)
