Laurence Crumbie
HE may be living in exile, but he’s not exactly slumming it.
Reporters from the television programme Viva la Vida have traced Spain’s disgraced King Emeritus, Juan Carlos I, to a secluded, paradise island in Abu Dhabi.
A 15 minute boat ride from the mainland, Nurai measures just one kilometre squared and is home to a swanky hotel as well as 11 luxurious villas that are ‘hidden behind vegetation.’
One of them, worth an estimated €11 million, has become the former king’s exile pad.
Owned by the Al-Qubaisi family, with whom Carlos I is staying, the two-storey house has six bedrooms, seven bathrooms, a panoramic sea view, spacious lounges, a snooker room, a table football room, its own cinema, a private beach, and an infinity pool.
Featured image source: @amnalqubaisi_offical Instagram
Altogether the plot is some 4150 metres squared.
Embroiled in numerous controversies, among them an elephant-hunting trip to Botswana in 2012, Carlos I abdicated in 2014 and has since been investigated for various financial crimes.
These include the use of ‘opaque credit cards’, for which he had to pay €678,393,72 to Spain’s tax agency in what constitutes an admission of fraud.
He left Spain on August 3, 2020, to go into exile, which is apparently not so bad after all.
