Today Corazón says that he was commissioned to write this book in 2005. How come it has taken 15 years?
Pilar Eyre It is true that it was Ymelda Navajo who told me about writing about the monarchy, first with the rivalry that existed between Don Juan Carlos and his cousin Don Alfonso de Borbón, and since then I have written about ten books related to the monarch, but Yours in particular knew that you had to mature it and have the right circumstances because a few years ago you couldn’t tell everything like today. He didn’t want red lines or for it to stay in a box. The lawyers have reviewed it and I have had to omit the names of three people – who are easy to recognize in the context – and it is true that Corinna’s lawyers called to warn me that they were going to look at it closely, but they have not commented on anything.
HC Do you mean to tell me that despite everything you say you haven’t had any reactions? Not even from the Royal House?
PE This time I have not sent the book to Casa Real where they always answer you in a formal manner although I know that Don Juan Carlos does have it as common friends that we share. I interpret that he must not be very dissatisfied because his friends keep talking to me.
HC As an author, is a book for or against the monarch? I say this because those pages are full of lights and shadows of a life where nothing has been lacking: complex family relationships, violence in boarding schools, impossible loves, broken marriages, lovers, ambitions…
P.E. I think it is a vision that humanizes the protagonist and I don’t think it is against the King at all. Obviously his life is fictionalized, but I will tell you that basically everything is based on things that I have been told or that I have documented. Even what happened on the wedding night of Juan Carlos and Sofía, I will tell you that there is a correspondence between Queen Victoria Eugenia, who was very gossipy, with a cousin of hers, where she tells what that first time of marriage was like in great detail. .
HC And what is your current opinion about Don Juan Carlos after delving into his career?
PE I’ll tell you that the day he abdicated I cried with rage because I didn’t understand why he had darkened his reign and thrown everything overboard. His ambition for money began the day he saw how millionaires lived after his Greek wedding.
HC He does not hide in his lines the bad relationship in marriage.
PE That is what the King’s lifelong friends have told me who think that the Queen does not correspond to the image we have of her. Sofia never wanted to end up like her mother, Queen Federica, whom she always had in mind. She was always very obsessed with what Don Juan Carlos was doing and her greatest ally was Sabino Fernández Campo, whose departure she felt very much. In any case, she was aware of everything that was happening.
HC Do you think the King was ever in love?
PE He has had three important loves: Barbara Rey, Marta Gayá and Corinna von Larsen.
