King Juan Carlos I of Spain has a dark past of which little is said. The emeritus, King Felipe’s father killed his brother when he was young.
It was on March 29, 1956 when the accident occurred between the brothers that marked the king forever.
Article summary
Three people are involved in the event: Juan Carlos de Borbón, his brother Alfonso and his cousin, Victor Emmanuel of Savoy, son of the last king of Italy. Today the controversy revives through a Netflix documentary.
How did King Juan Carlos kill his brother?
In the documentary “The Prince Who Never Reigned,” directed by Beatrice Borromeo, details are revealed of how the emeritus king of Spain ended the life of his brother Alfonso 67 years ago.
Victor Emmanuel of Savoy talks about his life in exile and in the third episode narrates how Juan Carlos I, father of Felipe VI, fired the gun that killed his younger brother.
“I have many things to tell, but I cannot. Things about Juan Carlos,” commented the man who for many years was a friend of the man who would later become king of Spain.
As a child, Victor Manuel and his family had to go into exile in Portugal after the fall of the Italian monarchy in 1946. There he shared many moments with Juan Carlos, since the Bourbon family was also in exile.
He recounted that the then young Juan Carlos “was not very polite”, he also detailed episodes of when they used to shoot at bottles and jars on the beach and how those gun games ended up going too far.
“He shot his brother and killed him. His name was Alfonso. He didn’t shoot him directly, but through a closet. I was there. It was a one hundred percent accident….. I hid my gun immediately, otherwise I would have been blamed again,” he explained in the documentary.
At the time, Juan Carlos, 18, and Alfonso (14) were practicing their marksmanship with a small .22 caliber revolver in the playroom on the second floor of their home when the gun went off.
Versions on the death of King Juan Carlos’ brother
Laurence Debray, the emeritus king’s authorized biographer, published that the exact details of that death will remain “shrouded in silence”.
However, the dictator Francisco Franco ordered the Spanish embassy in Lisbon to issue the official version in a statement.
“While his Highness, the Infante Alfonso, was cleaning a revolver that night with his brother, a shot was fired that hit him in the forehead and killed him in a few minutes.” The accident took place at 8:30 p.m. on March 29, 1956, 67 years ago.
According to writer and journalist Abel Hernández, the bullet entered through the nose and reached the brain.
Shortly thereafter, another version emerged that revealed that it was Juan Carlos who had the gun and that he was the one who fired the shot.
Death of Juan Carlos’ brother separated the family
The body was buried on the morning of Saturday, March 31 in the cemetery of Cascais.
Several bags of Spanish soil were dumped into the grave.
After the ceremony, Juan got alone into his black Bentley and drove to an unspecified place on the coast, where he threw the pistol into the sea.
“I never want to see it again,” he said to explain the act; he also closed any possibility of discovering who wielded the .22 caliber pistol.
What did become evident from that day on was that the father-son relationship, until then affectionate, became cold and distant.
The day after his brother’s death, Juan Carlos was sent to Spain, where he finished his education away from the rest of his family, with whom he met very few times since then.
The only public gesture the king made to his brother was to repatriate his remains in 1992 and bury them in the family pantheon.
