Spain Duke's villa seized in case troubling ailing King

A court on Monday impounded a luxury villa and other properties of Spanish King Juan Carlos’s son-in-law in a corruption case that has plunged the royal family into crisis.

Separately, the royal place set a date for the king’s new hip replacement, the latest in a string of operations that have sparked debate about the future of his reign.

The court in Mallorca ordered the seizure of properties owned by Inaki Urdangarin, husband of the king’s daughter Cristina, to cover a 6.1 million euro ($8.2 million) bond for his liability in the case, it said in a written ruling.

The court is investigating accusations that Urdangarin, an ex-Olympic handball champion, and his former business partner Diego Torres embezzled six million euros in public funds.

The money was allegedly placed in the non-profit Noos Institute, which Urdangarin chaired from 2004 to 2006 and of which Cristina was a board member, for it to organise sports events.

In a separate case, the judge investigating the allegations, Jose Castro, has also ordered the tax office to examine Cristina’s financial affairs.

The three deny any wrongdoing and have not been formally charged with any crime.

The scandal has nevertheless plunged Juan Carlos’s family into its worst popularity crisis in his nearly four-decade reign, sharpening scrutiny of the royals as Spain suffers from five years of economic turmoil.

The list of homes, garages and other buildings detailed in Monday’s ruling included Urdangarin’s share of a luxury villa in Barcelona which he owns with Cristina.

It also included properties of companies owned by the couple and Torres and was aimed at covering the court bond imposed on both men.

The palace has excluded Urdangarin from its official functions since the judicial investigation was launched in late 2011.

Juan Carlos won respect for his role in Spain’s transition to democracy after the death of the dictator Francisco Franco in 1975.

But the Noos scandal has since combined with his health problems, and discontent among recession-hit Spaniards over the royals’ lifestyle, to raise debate about the king’s future.

The king himself sparked outrage last year for taking an expensive elephant-hunting holiday in Botswana, while Spain struggled through a recession with one in four workers out of a job.

He broke his right hip during the trip and had to be flown home for surgery. Afterwards, he issued an unprecedented public apology for the hunting trip — seen as a sign of changing times for Spain’s constitutional monarchy.

That affair also drew attention to the king’s friendship with Corinna zu Sayn-Wittgenstein, a blonde German aristocrat who is 28 years his junior, after it emerged that she accompanied him on the trip to Botswana.

He later had his left hip replaced too, but that joint became infected, sending him back to the surgery this year.

Doctors fitted him with a temporary prosthesis in September and a royal palace spokesman said on Monday that they will next implant a permanent one on November 21.

It will be the king’s ninth operation in just over three years.

With Juan Carlos appearing in public on crutches and looking frail over recent months, speculation has grown that he may abdicate in favour of his son Felipe, 45, despite the palace’s denials.

Felipe took his father’s place at a national day parade on October 12 for the first time and also replaced him at the annual Ibero-American summit in Panama last month.