Juan Carlos of Spain was born in exile in Rome and during his childhood lived in a boarding school in Switzerland and also with his family - the parents, the counts of Barcelona, ​​and his siblings - in Estoril. It was only at the age of ten that he went to Spain to be educated under the direction of General Franco, so that one day he would be his successor.

The adolescence of the emeritus king of Spain was, however, marked by a tragic event that 'haunts' the former sovereign to this day.

It was Holy Thursday 1956 and the counts of Barcelona, ​​Juan and María de las Mercedes, received their children in Estoril. Juan Carlos, 18, was carrying a weapon that a colleague from the Military Academy had given him, a Long Automatic Star, caliber 22.

With his brother, Alfonso, who was 14 at the time, they spent hours firing the weapon in the garden, until their father, Don Juan, ordered the gun to be put away. After much pleading, the two brothers convinced their mother to return the weapon to them. "It's not for shooting, it's just for looking at," they said. 

And it was after that moment that the misfortune happened. The brothers were alone when a shot rang out, which neither the counts nor the Infanta Margarita, their sister, heard. Only the eldest of the four children of the counts of Barcelona, ​​the Infanta Pilar, heard the shot.

According to the writer and journalist Abel Hernández, quoted by La Nación, the bullet entered the young Alfonso's nose and hit his brain. The youngest son of the counts of Barcelona would die minutes later.

  Don Alfonso de Borbón, 1956© Getty Images  

The official report, released by the Spanish embassy in Lisbon, refers to a story that does not exactly correspond to the truth: "While His Highness the Infante Alfonso was cleaning a revolver that night with his brother, a shot was fired that hit him in the forehead and killed him in a few minutes." Later, another version is made known: It was Juan Carlos who was holding the gun when it fired. Since then, different versions of what happened on that fateful night have coexisted and no one knows for sure what happened.

Hernández says that Don Juan went up the stairs two at a time, picked up his son and went down with him, having wrapped him in a Spanish flag while they waited for the doctor to arrive. Juan Carlos was devastated and is said to have said that he wanted to become a monk, but his father is said to have put his hand on his brother's chest, forcing him to swear that he would fulfill his dynastic duties.

And so it was, Juan Carlos ascended to the throne in November 1975 and reigned for almost 40 years, until he abdicated in favor of his son, Felipe VI, in June 2014.

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