King Juan Carlos's grandmother was one of the first to embrace Grace Kelly after her engagement to Rainier of Monaco and, since then, the relationship between the two families has been close.
On May 31, Prince Rainier of Monaco would have turned one hundred years old. A moment that is being used to value his figure, not only from the Principality, where a spectacular photographic exhibition has just been inaugurated in his memory but also from the main international media. One of the lesser-known facets of him is his friendship with King Juan Carlos I, which has its roots in the emeritus king's grandmother, Queen Victoria Eugenia.
The relationship between the Bourbons and the Grimaldi would explode decades later when Alberto de Mónaco, as a member of the International Olympic Committee, in the Assembly held in July 2005 to choose the venue for the 2012 Olympic Games, to which Madrid had presented itself as a candidate, asked a question insinuating that the capital of Spain might not be safe enough to host them.
It generated astonishment and annoyance and many considered that not only the question but also the tone could have been responsible for Madrid not being elected. A few months earlier, his older sister, Princess Carolina, had been in the Spanish capital to attend the wedding of Kings Felipe and Letizia, which was held at the Almudena Cathedral on May 22, 2004.
The clearest proof of this disagreement was the conspicuous absence of any member of the Spanish royal family at the wedding of Alberto and Charlène de Monaco on July 1, 2011, which was held in Monte Carlo. The representatives of practically all the royal houses in the world, reigning or not, were present, which showed that the honeymoon between the Bourbons and the Grimaldi had ended many years ago.
The origin of the friendship between Rainier of Monaco and Juan Carlos of Spain
To find the genesis of the friendship between King Juan Carlos and Rainier we have to go back to the years of exile of his grandmother, Queen Victoria Eugenia, who since her exile in the city of Lausanne, maintained a very close friendship with Grace Kelly, with who met very frequently in the palace when he decided to spend seasons in the Principality.
Those ties were close because in very difficult circumstances for the winner of an Oscar for The Anguish of Living and Alfred Hitchcock's muse, she was socially rejected by royalty, who accepted no other alternative to morganatic marriage than the renunciation of dynastic rights.
Rainier's wedding to the protagonist of To Catch a Thief and Rear Window held in the Monte Carlo cathedral on April 19, 1959, did not include any member of the royal family among its guests, except King Farouk of Egypt. For this reason, to underline her friendship with Queen Victoria Eugenia, she was the godmother of Alberto de Monaco's baptism.
The Monegasque princes attended the wedding of Kings Juan Carlos and Sofía in Athens on May 14, 1962, despite the opposition of Queen Federica of Greece, mother of the emeritus, and they were entertained on their honeymoon with a party at the Monte Carlo Sporting Club, as well as giving them a sailboat.
When Grace Kelly died in a fatal traffic accident on September 14, 1982, it was the Counts of Barcelona who represented the Spanish royal family at her funeral, and when Rainier died on April 6, 2005, King Juan Carlos traveled to the Principality when saying his last goodbye. Before attending his funeral, he went through the funeral chapel, installed in the Grimaldi Palace, where he offered condolences to his heir, Prince Albert.
After learning of his death, the emeritus stated that he "was a good friend, a great loss." A year earlier, on the day of the March 11 attacks in Madrid, Prince Rainier had sent his condolences to King Juan Carlos himself, as published by Le Journal de Monaco.
I have learned with deep emotion of the attacks that have just bloodied Madrid and of the tragic human consequences that have resulted from it. These heinous acts arouse in me a feeling of deep disgust and I would like to express to you personally and to the families of the unfortunate victims my painful and saddened condolences. With the assurance of my high esteem and faithful friendship," Rainier said in a gesture of empathy with his friend Juan Carlos de Borbón.
