Word: franco
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...XIII, as well as a great-great-grandson of Britain's Queen Victoria and a direct descendant of France's Bourbon monarchs. Despite his lineage, however, the Prince is less the product of royalty than the creation of a commoner. Under the close surveillance and tutelage of Franco since he was ten years old, Juan Carlos has been so thoroughly molded in the image of el Caudillo that he might appropriately be dubbed "Francisco II." Often described as a storybook prince, he has in fact seemed more like the Sleeping Beauty of Spanish politics, a retiring figure patiently...
...during the bloody chaos of Spain's Civil War, the Prince spent his early childhood shuttling between the various homes in exile that his family established after Spain became a republic in 1931. Juan Carlos' moderately liberal father Don Juan preferred exile to life under Franco's authoritarian rule; in 1948, though, he agreed to have his son educated in Spain under Franco's guidance. Hostility toward the Bourbon heir from both rightists and left-wing antimonarchists was so intense that the ten-year-old Prince became a virtual prisoner in Las Jarillas, a heavily guarded...
...Franco's precautions paid off. Juan Carlos was a serious, somewhat plodding student; he became fluent in five languages and conversant in two others. After a brief period of squiring Italy's high-living Princess Maria Gabriella, he settled down at 24 with a bride more suitable to his naturally subdued and by now almost melancholy temperament: Princess Sophia of Greece, a Girl Scout chief captain, amateur archaeologist and pediatric nurse. With their three children-Elena, 11, Cristina, 10, and Felipe, 7-the royal couple now live at state expense in the 20-room Zarzuela Palace, a modern...
...many years, Juan Carlos spent his mornings at the palace in briefing sessions with high-ranking government experts, following a curriculum for kingship devised by Franco. Economics was the subject on Monday, church matters and foreign policy on Tuesday, labor and industry on Wednesday, cultural affairs on Thursday, and military and scientific topics on Friday. Lately, his mornings have often been devoted to presiding at official functions, his afternoons to sports. The Prince hunts partridge, golfs, swims and water-skis ("I prefer one ski to two"). He holds a black belt in karate, a distinction he shares with his brother...
Since 1969, when Franco bypassed Don Juan by appointing Juan Carlos his official successor, the relationship between father and son has remained cordial but distant. The Prince and his family routinely visit Don Juan in Estoril, Portugal; reportedly, dynastic matters are tactfully avoided. Last June, however, Don Juan reasserted his right to the Spanish throne in a speech to several hundred supporters who had gathered at Estoril to celebrate his 62nd birthday. "I am not the head of any plot. I am not the rival of anyone," said Don Juan. But, he added, "I am the trustee of the centuries...