The Fall of King Juan Carlos

Nothing has been the same in Spain since the day, two years ago, when King Juan Carlos was revealed to have broken his hip on an elephant-hunting trip to Botswana, and was flown home to be treated at an exclusive clinic. Juan Carlos, who announced on Monday that he is abdicating the throne, was long revered for his role in vouchsafing Spain’s transition to democracy following the death, in 1975, of the country’s geriatric Fascist leader, Generalissimo Francisco Franco. In what was perhaps Carlos’s finest moment, he went on television, on February 23rd, 1981, to face down a right-wing military coup that was already under way; his address was seen as having saved Spain’s nascent democracy, earning him the gratitude and the affection of two generations of Spaniards. But all that was in the past, and the news about the elephant posed a number of problems for Juan Carlos, now in his seventies.