The decline of King Juan Carlos: who is Corinna Larsen, the woman who forced him to leave Spain

08/03/2020 - 17:38

• Clarín.com
• International

His was not just another love story. It was not one of the many Affairs - some claim that Juan Carlos I of Spain had relationships with more than 1500 women - that so distressed Queen Sofía during her marriage. It was more.

As soon as the current King Emeritus saw her - her friends say - she recognized something special, different. Although there are several versions about the time they met, the most accepted assures that it was in 2004, in an event that brought together the most distinguished of European society: it was a hunting day on a farm in Ciudad Real, in Spain. 

Juan Carlos was 66 years old and Corinna Larsen , 40. At the time, she was the manager of  Boss and Compan y, an arms company that organized luxury hunts, and held the title of princess along with the surname zu Sayn-Wittgenstein who had given her given her second husband, the German prince Casimir zu Sayn-Wiitgenstein, from whom she separated in 2005.

It was love at first sight. Such debauchery, that made the King many times more than sloppy in the relationship and let himself be seen, unconcerned, by the cameras of the paparazzi .

It was such an intense passion that today, many years later and already separated, he confronts them with Justice and forces Juan Carlos to leave Spain wrapped in a corruption scandal that also involves her. 

Chronicle of a hectic life 

Corinna Larsen was born in Germany in 1964. Her father, the Danish Finn Bönnig Larsen, was the director of Varig, the Brazilian airline. She studied International Relations in Geneva and then, at age 21, settled in Paris .

As elegant as he is distant, he speaks five languages, and for that very reason, his job at Boss and Company was to establish public relations with aristocrats, wealthy heirs, and Arab millionaires. Throughout her career she made the distinction a personal stamp that led her to rub shoulders with the most chic of the local elites.

Corinna had two marriages: the first with the British businessman Philip Adkins and the second with the German aristocrat Johann Casimir zu Sayn-Wittgenstein-Sayn. With each of them she had a son.

After meeting Juan Carlos , the man who accompanied her for more than ten years, her life transcended the limits of the nobility and her name settled in the mouth of the Spanish and the covers of the newspapers.

It is that although they could keep the relationship hidden for a long time, it was known about it when the king broke his hip while hunting elephants in Botswana, Africa , in 2012. While Queen Sofia was in Spain , Corinna , who worked for a company that organized safaris was with him.

The scandal of having found him hunting, plus the confirmation of his bond of lovers with Corinne were the initial kick in a series of events that led Juan Carlos  to move away from the throne and leave it to his son, King Felipe .

But there was more. Is that the relationship with Corinna exceeded the limits of passion and sheets, they also shared millionaire businesses for which now both must explain to Justice.

Already separated for a time, Corinna Larsen wants to give her testimony. She said she is going to speak, that she will tell what she knows. And you will not remember the nights of roses and champagne precisely.

On the bench - and then, for sure, in front of the press - he will describe what that network of irregular commissions, figureheads and shell companies like was also part of his history with King Juan Carlos . A story that it was not (only) love and that, this time, it did not have a happy ending.