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Date Published: 26/04/2022

ARCHIVED - For the first time ever, the King of Spain reveals how much money he has... and the amount might surprise you

ARCHIVED ARTICLE

Spain’s King Felipe VI has made a historical announcement declaring his private wealth, but many are confused that it only amounts to 2.5 million euros

<span style='color:#780948'>ARCHIVED</span> - For the first time ever, the King of Spain reveals how much money he has... and the amount might surprise you

The King of Spain, Felipe VI, has made public his wealth for the first time in the history of the Spanish monarchy, and commentators are scratching their heads over the relatively low sum published.

Between the 2,267,942.80 euros in current and savings accounts and the 305,450 euros in works of art, antiques and personal jewellery, Felipe VI has a supposed wealth of 2,573,392 euros.

According to this figure, King Felipe is one of the poorest regents in all of Europe. While 2.5 million euros is by no means a small amount of money, it pales in comparison with the estimated £500-600 million owned by Queen Elizabeth II, the 1 billion euros possessed by the Prince of Monaco and the 40 billion that belong to the world’s richest monarch, the King of Thailand.

Spain’s head of state decided to make his wealth public for the first time yesterday, Monday April 25, just two months before the eighth anniversary of his coronation.

“The assets of His Majesty the King are mainly made up of the remuneration he has received from the budgets of the Household of H.M. the King over the last 25 years, first as Prince of Asturias from 1998 and subsequently as King from 2014,” reads a note distributed by the Spanish Crown.

These payments amount to a gross sum of 4,275,796.94 euros, with the various relevant tax deductions having been made from this amount since then.

The announcement of the King’s wealth is part of His Majesty’s personal push to bring more transparency to the royal institution, mainly in response to the fiscal corruption of his father. the King Emeritus Juan Carlos I, who currently resides in self-imposed exile in Abu Dhabi.

“Since his proclamation before the Cortes Generales, His Majesty the King began the path of modernisation of the Crown to make it worthy of the respect and trust of the citizens under the principles of exemplarity, transparency, rectitude and integrity in its behaviour,” read a statement from the Crown, justifying the unprecedented decision to publish the head of state’s wealth.

In addition, a team of government auditors will review the finances of the Royal Household and the gifts received by the monarchs will be “registered and guarded”.

However, the revelation of the King’s personal wealth does not extend to his wife or other family members, and some observers have noted that in reality the King is untouchable by law and it is impossible to know by any legal means whether the amount he has declared is real.

This is not the first time that Spain’s King has tried to polish the image of his family and the institution it represents.

A man on a mission

As soon as he took the reins of the Royal Household in 2014, Felipe limited the number of members of the Royal Family to himself, his wife Queen Letizia and their two daughters, Princess Leonor and Infanta Sofía, as well as their parents, Juan Carlos I and Sofía. He thus left out his sisters, the Infantas Elena and Cristina. At that point, the latter had already been charged in the ‘Noós’ corruption case, which later led to the imprisonment of her husband, Iñaki Urdangarin.

Later, in 2020, King Felipe VI took another major decision. Following the publication in the press that he appeared as a beneficiary of two foundations based abroad and linked to the King Emeritus, he announced that he would renounce his father’s inheritance and withdraw his afther’s annual allowance from the Royal Household.

Image: Archive

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