The singer who blackmailed Spain

It was called “Operation Persian.” No one remembers why this was the name, but it’s likely that it was chosen because of the star’s fondness for Persian cats.

The blackmail plot lasted 10 years (from 1994 until 2004) and cost the Spanish government millions of dollars, as confirmed to EL PAÍS by individuals who had direct knowledge of the payments. The state’s objective was to prevent the leak of photos, videos and audios that revealed King Juan Carlos I’s infidelity with actress and TV star Bárbara Rey. Public knowledge of the affair would have put the stability of the monarchy in jeopardy, along with the entire political system that had been built since the transition to democracy in (1975-1982), following the death of dictator Francisco Franco.

Three decades later, the release of these documents shows that the operation failed. Or, perhaps it didn’t. The same sources reason that what may have been seen as an explosive revelation has lost power today, after a long string of scandals that already triggered the abdication and voluntary exile of the emeritus king, who abdicated in favor of his son — Felipe VI — in 2014. The affair has become mere fodder for gossip columns and the tabloid press.

Still, there are two nagging points of interest: why were public funds used to cover up bedroom sins, as if they were state secrets? And what did the former king know about the attempted coup d’état of February 23, 1981, before it was carried out?

Doubts about this last point have been fueled by the publication of a conversation between Juan Carlos I with Bárbara Rey in the early-1990s: “Word of honor, darling; I really laugh at Alfonso Armada. [My former aide] spent seven years in prison, [retired] to his country house in Galicia and the guy has never said a word. Never! But now, this other guy is talking…”

The former king is heard saying this in a recording that was released by the right-wing digital newspaper OkDiario. The first individual mentioned is Major General Alfonso Armada, who was sentenced to 30 years in prison for the crime of rebellion, following his involvement in the 1981 coup attempt. The “other guy” is Sabino Fernández Campo, who was head of the Royal Household until he was dismissed by Juan Carlos in 1993.

Thirty years ago, the government at the time already knew about the existence of this recording. “Bárbara Rey has a taped telephone conversation with the King, in which he speaks of Sabino,” wrote Lieutenant General Emilio Alonso Manglano — then-director of the secret service — in one of his notebooks. This is according to journalists Juan Fernández-Miranda and Javier Chicote, who documented the incident in a book.

The blackmail began in July 1994, when Bárbara Rey — who had an intermittent romantic relationship with the monarch for more than 15 years — demanded a large sum of money, in exchange for not publishing the lurid material she had stored away. She received 25 million pesetas (about $150,000 today) from the administrator of the king’s fortune, Manuel Prado y Colón de Carvajal. This is according to Fernández-Miranda and Chicote. The transfer has also been corroborated by other sources.

Only a year after the money was handed over, the blackmail began again. Bárbara Rey claimed that she was going through financial difficulties. And businessman Mario Conde — who had also tried to extort the government, with papers about the dirty war against the Basque terror group ETA (1983-1987) taken by former spy Juan Alberto Perote — was interested in getting hold of the material in the possession of the monarch’s former lover.

At that time, the main institutions of the state — from the Bank of Spain to the Civil Guard — were in the spotlight. Only the monarchy had managed to keep its image intact. After an arduous negotiation, an agreement was reached, one that seemed definitive. The agreed-upon sum was 600 million pesetas ($3.6 million today), divided into a first payment of 100 million, with 500 million in installments, at a rate of 50 million per year. This was meant to guarantee Rey’s silence for 10 years.

When he found out about the blackmail, then-prime minister José María Aznar (1996-2004) flew into a rage. The extortion was one of the reasons behind his bad relationship with the king. However, the payment schedule was adhered to, at least until the year 2000. The money came from the reserve funds of the Ministry of Defense, or the National Intelligence Center (CNI) itself. Otherwise, it was taken from publicly-owned companies, with the secret service responsible for facilitating the delivery.

During the summer of 2004, following the wedding of the Prince and Princess of Asturias — a particularly critical moment for the Royal Family — suspicions arose that one of the intermediaries may have been keeping part of the money that was collected. As a result, the administration of newly-elected prime minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero (2004-2011) turned off the tap. At the Zarzuela Palace, the seat of the royal household, everyone held their breath, waiting for Bárbara Rey’s reaction. But no leak occurred. That is, until last month.

In addition to being paid in cash, the star received payments in-kind. For instance, between 1994 and 1996, she hosted a variety show on Spain’s state-owned broadcaster TVE. And, from 2000 to 2005, she starred in a cooking show on public television in the region of Valencia, for which she received €1.5 million ($1.6 million). This was despite the fact that she didn’t speak Valencian. She didn’t know how to cook, either.

Despite the financial agreement, the CNI didn’t trust her. In 1997, a special operations team broke into her chalet outside of Madrid. Bárbara Rey filed a police report, claiming that “sensitive material [pertaining to] a high-ranking state figure” had been stolen from her house. The report from Operation Persian states that the house was “clean”… but nobody doubted that she had copies of the sensitive material stored away. Secret agents even followed her on a trip abroad, suspecting that she was keeping them in a safety deposit box.

After 30 years under lock-and-key, at the end of September, the Dutch magazine Privé published photos of Juan Carlos I and Bárbara Rey in a loving embrace. The pictures were taken in June 1994, four years after they resumed a relationship (which was interrupted by her marriage to a famous lion tamer, Ángel Cristo). The images had been sold to the magazine by the son of the star: he claimed that he had taken them.

This was only the start. A week later, OkDiario began to put out the recordings that the mistress had taken of the then-king. They had been circulating in recent years, in search of the highest bidder.

What hasn’t yet been spread are the three videos that were also recorded in Bárbara Rey’s house (one in the dining room and two in the bedroom, the latter supposedly filmed by her son, hidden in a closet). The CNI got hold of the tapes, but nobody is sure that there are no copies, as there are copies of the photos and the audio recordings.

The videos may add more scandal to the story, but they will hardly clarify the main question: what did Major General Armada keep quiet about? The general — who was Juan Carlos’ tutor and a secretary of the Royal Household for 12 years — held a meeting with the king at the Baqueira Beret ski resort in the Aran Valley on February 6, 1981. The king received him again in a long private audience at the Zarzuela Palace on February 13, just 10 days before Lieutenant Colonel Tejero Molino’s assault on Congress.

In his memoir, José Bono — former president of Congress — transcribes what the loquacious Fernández Campo Sabino told him, in March 2009: “The king cried on February 23 when he heard shots in Congress… [he] told me that he didn’t expect shots. He didn’t expect shots, but did he expect something? I think he expected something more in accordance with the law, because Alfonso Armada had brought him a letter from a famous professor of constitutional law, who proposed that the King personally appear in Congress and — after a speech in which he highlighted the bad situation in Spain — propose a government that was to be headed by an independent, presumably Armada. The king didn’t like [the idea of] being the one to appear before Congress. I warned him that it was a proposition contrary to the Constitution. Thank goodness I was there!” These were Sabino’s words, according to Bono.

Of the main protagonists of February 23, 1981, the now-emeritus king — then-head of state — is the only person who still hasn’t given his version of events. It’s expected that he’ll offer it in the memoirs that the writer Laurence Debray is writing with him. They already have a title — Reconciliation — but there’s still no publication date. Its launch — previously announced for early-2025 — has been postponed indefinitely.

Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get more English-language news coverage from EL PAÍS USA Edition