A former Spanish police commissioner has claimed that Spain's former King Juan Carlos I was injected with female hormones as his rampant sex drive was a danger to the state. Ex-police commissioner José Manuel Villarejo, who is on trial for blackmail and corruption, claimed that the disgraced former head of state was given the drugs by the Spanish secret service to "lower his libido". The 70-year-old former police personnel noted that King Juan was injected with "female hormones and testosterone inhibitors".
José Manuel Villarejo reportedly told a parliamentary hearing that it became a "problem for the state that he was such an ardently passionate person. Villarejo further claimed that the former National Intelligence Centre (CNI) boss and a close ally of King Juan, Félix Sanz Roldán, was behind the alleged idea. Roldán, however, denied he had played any role in administering the hormones, alleging that he only learned about it when Juan Carlos' former mistress, Corinna zu Sayn-Wittgenstein, told him. The shocking allegations regarding Juan Carlos' libido surfaced during Villarejo's trial which began this month.
Why was King Juan injected with female hormones?
Corinna zu Sayn-Wittgenstein was allegedly recorded by Villarejo in 2016 saying people in the royal entourage gave Juan Carlos "a lot of female hormones to take away his strength". "They have taken everything from him, he could not be with a woman or anything, " the businesswoman, who had an affair with King Juan from 2004 to 2009 during his kingship, said. She further claimed that a French doctor had verified this by inspecting his medication. King Juan Carlos' former lover, Sayn-Wittgenstein is entangled in a legal battle with him and Spain's CNI amid a money laundering case in Switzerland and her claims she was illegally put under surveillance. An investigation into whether Sayn-Wittgenstein was given cash after her lover allegedly earned a secret commission for helping to win a £6 billion Saudi rail deal is going on.
King Juan Carlos I is involved in multiple scandals
King Juan, who is facing two separate criminal probes in Spain, fled the country after landing in multiple corruption scandals. One is in connection with the use of credit cards linked to foreign accounts after his June 2014 abdication when he lost his constitutional protection against prosecution as a serving monarch. Prosecutors are probing if the former king accessed funds deposited in accounts held by a Mexican businessman and a Spanish Air Force official.
Juan Carlos is widely admired for steering Spain to democracy from the tyranny of dictatorship under General Franco when he took over in 1975. He, however, faced growing criticism both towards the end of his reign and in his role as the ex-king. Recently, he was forced to deny he was 'seriously ill' after pictures of him looking frail began circulating as he remains at his hideaway in the Middle East.
