Juan Carlos Was First Spanish Monarch To Push For Better Relations With Latin America

King Juan Carlos of Spain abdicated his throne on Monday to his son Prince Felipe in what he described as an attempt to usher in a “new generation of hope” for Spain. El Pais notes that although the 76-year-old Juan Carlos might be best known in Latin America for his 2007 scolding of Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez, he was also the first Spanish monarch to push for closer relations with Latin America after its liberation, making extensive trips to countries across the region during his nearly 40 years on the throne.

Notimérica writes that in 1976, as Juan Carlos led a series of democratic reforms following the handoff of power from Francisco Franco, he and Queen Sofia traveled to the Dominican Republic, Venezuela and Colombia. In a speech made in the city of Cartagena he called for Spain to undertake “a new effort of imagination and courage to arrive not to new lands, but rather to new solutions, new policies and new formulas for co-existence.” Spain held its first elections the following year, when the couple also went to Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Costa Rica and Panama, and in subsequent years to Mexico, Peru, Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay.

In recent years, the king had also begun to appear at inaugurations of Latin American presidents, including that of Chilean president Michelle Bachelet and even El Salvador’s Salvador Sánchez Cerén, a one-time guerilla with the leftist FMLN. It couldn’t be said that the king was ever especially keen on Latin America’s populist political figures, but Prince Felipe might be even less so -- case in point, Bolivia’s Evo Morales, who said the king was his friend in an interview with Vanity Fair this year but added that Felipe “looks at me weird."