There’s a story that’s rarely told when discussing the King Emeritus of Spain, Juan Carlos I, and it has a name: María Gabriela di Savoia.
Before Sofia of Greece, before the crown, and before everything that followed, there was an Italian princess who grew up with him in exile in Estoril, fell into a swimming pool, and let him rescue her. From that moment, a relationship blossomed that lasted six years. In his memoirs, he describes her as his first true love: a “beautiful girl with a slender figure and golden hair” who brightened gatherings with his friends.
Juan Carlos called her “Ella,” with a capital E, and he even slept with her photo on his nightstand at the Military Academy. It’s not a minor detail.
The problem, if you can call it that, was that María Gabriela had seen up close what it meant to belong to a royal family. When Italy became a republic in 1946, her family lost the country overnight. That experience left a lasting mark on her, stripping her of any desire to ever wear a crown again.
So, when Juan Carlos proposed to her after six years together, she said no. There was no going back. And it wasn’t just him. She also turned down Baudouin of Belgium and the Shah of Persia himself, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who had a weakness for women with light-colored eyes and had her on his list.
Her refusal opened the door for Farah Diba, who eventually became the Shah’s third wife and accompanied him into exile years later.
What’s striking about this story is how clear Maria Gabriela was in understanding herself. “She asserted her freedom and didn’t want to be bound by the duties of royalty,” Juan Carlos himself explained.
And she stuck to that to the end, as when she chose to marry, she did so to Roberto Zellinger de Balkany, a businessman with no royal blood in his veins. No thrones, no protocols.
“Why didn’t I marry him? Because I didn’t. That’s just how life goes. Anyway, if I had married him, I would have been jealous, and he would already be in his little box at the Escorial,” María Gabriela once said.
Meanwhile, Juan Carlos ended up sitting next to Queen Sofía at the wedding of the Dukes of Kent because his father practically begged him to, and the rest is official history.
María Gabriela went her own way, became a mother, separated, and has spent decades leading a private life about which we know almost nothing. What we do know is that they both have fond memories of their shared teenage years, and when they see each other, they exchange kisses and kind words.