Princess Diana’s rumoured tryst with King Juan Carlos: Former Spanish monarch spills the beans

Enticing gossip about a possible affair between Princess Diana and King Juan Carlos of Spain had swirled in the 1980s when they spent some time vacationing together, while accompanied by their families.

Between 1986 and 1990, the British and Spanish royal families were photographed on multiple holidays, which included hours devoted to yachting and staying at Palma de Mallorca’s Marivent Palace in Spain.

Putting the rumours to rest decades after they first arose, the former monarch is dropping the curtain on the whole ordeal in a new bombshell memoir, titled Reconciliation.

An unfavourable encounter

“Cold, taciturn, distant” is how Juan Carlos remembers Diana — “except in the presence of the paparazzi,” an excerpt from his memoir has revealed.

The snippet was obtained and shared by The Telegraph, who has described the former King as a “disgraced former monarch and notorious womaniser”, and will be part of the book which will release in France next week, November 5.

An uncomfortable encounter

If Princess Diana seemed cold to King Juan Carlos, it was for good reason — the late royal described him as “a very libidinous man” to Andrew Morton, a journalist and author of her biography.

“I felt uncomfortable being left alone with him in a room, although I can assure you that nothing happened,” Morton quoted Diana’s statement to her friends following a trip to Mallorca in his book, Ladies of Spain.

The former King’s current whereabouts

Juan Carlos imposed an exile on himself following the probe into his financial and tax dealings by the Spanish supreme court’s prosecutors. He moved to Abu Dhabi in 2020, leaving behind his wife, Queen Sofia.

It is well known that the retired monarch indulged in several extra marital affairs — the one with Corinna zu Sayn-Wittgenstein-Sayn, an entrepreneur and socialite, eventually becoming a major consequence for his abdication in 2014.

While his recent interview for French publication, Le Figaro, revealed, “To help my son, I looked for a place where journalists from my country couldn’t easily find me.”

The Telegraph further reported that the self-exiled Juan Carlos has claimed that “he decided to write his memoirs together with the French author Lawrence Debray to reclaim what he considered his rightful place in the history of Spain.”

He is still married to Queen Sofia, who now resides at Zarzuela Palace in Madrid, as the couple lead entirely divorced lives otherwise.