King Juan Carlos of Spain operated on after ‘elephant hunting’ accident.

It was not the king’s first hunting controversy. In 2006 there were reports
that while on holiday in Russia he had shot and killed a performing bear
called Mitrofan which had first been fed honey mixed with vodka.

News of the accident broke on the day that many Spaniards marked the
anniversary of the birth of the Spains
Second Republic when on April 14 1931, the last king, Alfonso XIII went into
exile.

It set off fevered controversy within Spain and brought more unwelcome
scrutiny on a Royal family that traditionally has enjoyed the kind of
privacy and respect that the Windsors could only dream of.

“The King, in this situation of economic distress and the dramas that
affect millions of people, instead of being in his office puzzling over the
fate of his country is instead hunting exotic animals and endangered
species, ” said Basque politician Julia Madrazo at a rally in Bilbao to
commemorate the Second Republic.

“This April 14 has given us a fine account of a day in the life of our
King, full of privileges of the past.” Spain’s left-leaning daily
newspaper El Pais speculated that the monarch had been on a trip to hunt
elephants in Botswana, where sanctioned elephant hunting is allowed to cull
herd numbers.

Andres Gutierrez Lara, president of the Spanish Federation of Hunting said it
would cost between 7,000 and 20,000 euros to shoot an elephant on top of
travel costs.

“It was a private trip and therefore not subject to official comment,”
Juan Carlos Zamora, private secretary to the King, explained to The
Sunday Telegraph,
refusing to confirm whether the monarch had in fact
been shooting elephants.

“As ever the media will come to their own conclusions,” he said.

The palace also declined to disclose how the trip had been funded. It comes
just weeks after the monarch publicly expressed his worry over the state of
Spain’s economy.

“One of the consequences of the crisis, youth unemployment, gives me
sleepless nights,” he told a group of students in Barcelona in March.

It was the 4th time the king has undergone surgery since May 2010. He had
surgery on his Achilles tendon last September, a knee replacement in June
last year and a benign tumour removed from one of his lungs the year before.

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