Juan Carlos I

Juan Carlos I, now 86, abdicated in disgrace in 2014.

Not long after Beatrix, Belgium’s King Albert II and Spain’s King Juan Carlos I retired and were succeeded by their eldest sons.

The state-run Centre for Sociological Studies stopped asking citizens to rate the monarch in 2015, a year after Felipe VI acceded to the throne following the abdication of his scandal-ridden father, Juan Carlos I. Those surveyed then gave Felipe VI an average score of 4.34 out of ten.

“He, as the head of state, was the motor of change,” said William Chislett, an author and expert on Spain who interviewed Juan Carlos I in 1977.

In 2020, revelations of payouts of more than $100 million to Juan Carlos I from Saudi Arabia, linked to public contracts for Spanish companies, burst onto newspaper front pages and cable news tickers.