Spanish King Juan Carlos’ grandson shoots himself in foot

She added that her son was calm and was playing with his mobile when she left
him. “He’ll be in hospital for as long as the doctors say, but I think he’ll
make a quick recovery,” she said.

An official statement later issued by the Royal Household said:”While His
Highness, Prince Alfonso, was cleaning a revolver with his brother, a shot
went off which hit him in the forehead and killed him within a few minutes.”

The shooting on March 29, 1956, in a bedroom at the Spanish Royal Family’s
home in exile at Estoril in neighbouring Portugal, received little publicity
under the Franco dictatorship. But Juan Carlos was reported to have been
devastated and to have told family and friends that he “felt responsible”.

However, the traumatic experience did not put-off the future king from
hunting, a love he shared with Franco after the old dictator brought the
young prince back to Spain and groomed him to become his successor. Both men
frequently shot together across Spain.

When Juan Carlos took over as head of state after Franco’s death in November,
1975, he soon set about changing the country and steering it to full
democracy, signing away the absolute powers he inherited from the dictator
to become a constitutional monarch.

But he did not give-up the pleasures of shooting he shared with his hard line
predecessor, often courting controversy from the anti-hunting lobby – none
less so than when he shot a bear on a trip to Russia six years ago which was
later said to have been cooked and drunk with vodka, by the King’s hosts.

Young Felipe was reported on Monday to have been holding the small 36 calibre
shotgun pointed at the ground when it went off. “He was in the patio of the
house with his father when the shotgun was fired causing an injury to the
right foot,” said a Royal Household spokesman.

His first family visitor on Tuesday at the Clinica Quiron at Pozuelo de
Alarcon, a residential satellite town a few miles north-west of Madrid, was
his grandmother, Queen Sofia, who arrived at his bedside at 9.30am. He was
also visited by his mother’s cousin Maria Zurita, and before either of them
by Avelino Barros, the Royal Surgeon.

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