King Juan Carlos of Spain’s Shakespearean Downfall Packs Madrid Stage

As an exiled king who shot dead his younger brother in an accident as a young man, faced down coup plotters, and is rumored to have slept with more than 1,500 women, the life of King Juan Carlos of Spain is not exactly short of drama.

Throw in eye-watering allegations of financial impropriety, an ill-advised spot of elephant hunting, and a multimillion-dollar gift to his former lover, and it is perhaps not hard to see why a satirical play based on the larger-than-life former king is filling the house night after night at a theater in Madrid this spring.

Indeed, the author of the play, called The King Who Was, has compared Juan Carlos to one of the great figures of Shakespearean tragedy. Albert Boadella, founder of the Els Joglars company, told El Pais that the bard “would have been delirious” at the prospect of telling his story.

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