This bio has been approved by Mac Gregor.
Juan IV (1939-2018)
King Juan IV was born as Infante Juan on June 26, 1939 in Madid, Spain. He was the eldest son of Carlos, Prince of Asturias, the future King Carlos IX (1892-1978) and his second wife the Austrian, Swiss and Belgian-raised Princess Maria Teresa of Bourbon-Parma (1901-1986). He was also the Legitimist claimant to the throne of France as King Jean II. He was also the nephew of King Juan III (1884-1943), although Juan IV only had vague memories of his uncle, as his uncle Juan III died when he was only four years old in 1943. After the death of his uncle and the ascension of his father as king, the four year-old Infante Juan became Juan, Prince of Asturias and the heir to the Spanish throne.
As a child, Infante Juan was, just like his father, educated by Jesuit teachers in a number of different Roman Catholic schools throughout Spain. In his adolescence, in the footsteps in his father, he read a lot about Spanish history, European history, classical history, military history, music theory, astronomy, among other such subjects. After reaching adulthood, Juan, Prince of Asturias was educated at Complutense University of Madrid from 1957 to 1962. After graduating from university, Juan, Prince of Asturias settled into a life of athleticism, relaxation and public service. On September 1, 1965, Juan, Prince of Asturias married Princess Gabriela of Bohemia (1938- ), the youngest daughter of the late King Conrad I of Bohemia (1896-1952). Prince Juan met Princess Gabriela in the summer of 1960 while she was vacationing in Mallorca in the Balearic Islands and while he himself was temporarily living in a villa on the island. The couple had the following children; King Carlos X (1966- ), Infanta Anna Maria (1967- ), Infanta Juana Maria (1969- ) and Infante Rodrigo Alfonso (1972- ).
On March 31, 1978, his father King Carlos IX died at the age of 85. As a result, Juan, Prince of Asturias became King Juan IV of Spain. The coronation of King Juan IV took place in Madrid on April 20, 1978. Soon after the beginning of this reign, from June 10 to June 25, 1978, the 16th Summer Olympiad was held in Seville, and Juan IV presided over the opening ceremonies of the games. However, these were to be an Olympics rife with scandal. With the majority of the world’s population involved in the ongoing Asia-Pacific War, many nations, such as India, Japan and Venezuela, declined to send any athletes to the games. In addition, pro-democracy demonstrations disrupted several of the events, thus making the games, in the opinion of many international observers and in the words of Harper’s Weekly journalist Lawrence Kowalski (1943- ); “the worst Olympics in memory.” Beginning in July, 1978 and during the last years of the Asia-Pacific War, and with the personal approval of King Juan VI and Prime Minister Hernando Enrique Plaza (1927-2001), the Spanish government sent a battalion of volunteer soldiers to fight with the army of their metaphorical Iberian cousin of the Kingdom of Portugal in their colony of Gao against the forces of the United Republic of India. After almost two years of heroic fighting alongside the Portuguese armies, the Iberian Division returned to Spain via A Coruña and returned to a hero’s welcome in May, 1980, shortly after the end of the war.
On November 24, 1982, the deeply conservative Carlist government of the Kingdom of Spain under King Juan IV vowed to help the exiled Portuguese regime regain control of mainland Portugal. In spite of this, many average Spaniards sympathized with the Portuguese revolutionaries and their grievances, as they too chaffed under an authoritarian, monarchial rule. After a month, the Spanish government ordered a general mobilization of the Spanish armed forces in an effort to bolster the small Spanish Army for what was hoped would be a quick march on Lisbon. Unfortunately for King Juan IV and Prime Minister Emilio Sagasta (1928-1993), events would soon spin out of their control.
On January 7, 1983, as the Spanish Army was mobilizing, soldiers of a reserve unit mustering near Toledo mutinied against their officers, refusing to take up arms to suppress the Portuguese revolutionaries. News of the mutiny in Toledo only exasperated the various protests and strikes that were then engulfing the country. Madrid quickly dispatched Colonel Vito Rolando Vazquez (1938- ) of the 64th Cataphract Brigade to bring the rebels to heel. However, as a member of the Phoenix Society (Sociedad de Phoenix), a secret brotherhood of reform minded army officers, Vazquez was deeply committed to political change. Seizing the initiative, Vazquez and most of his soldiers joined the mutineers and began marching north to Madrid. On February 11, 1983, Vazquez and his forces reached Madrid. Five days later, on February 16, 1983, the Spanish court decamped by helicopter to Seville where troops loyal to the crown had already crushed an uprising. On February 18, 1983, Vazquez and a number of dissident groups including socialist, pro-democratic and technocratic groups, and even some monarchist groups wishing for a legitimist Bourbon restoration, announced the formation of the Second Spanish Republic in a live televised address.
Over the next month and half, the Spanish Royalist and Republican forces fought each other across Spain as the two belligerents scrambled to secure key terrain and major population centers. The Republicans were aided by various Basque, Catalonian and other separatists who wished to craft a better position for themselves in a new and democratic Spain. By the end of March, the rebels had captured a swath of territory in the northeastern part of Spain although sizable pockets of Royalist troops remained such as those in the army’s garrisons along the Pyrenees Mountains. Meanwhile, the Royalist and Carlist government operating out of Seville had sent in reinforcements from Spanish Sahara and planned for an offensive in the spring to regain control of rebel-held Spain.
In April, 1983, in the provisional capital of Seville, King Juan IV appointed Xavier Felicaino de la Rosa (1920-2015) Generalissimo of the Royalist forces. Five months later, in September, 1983, the Royalists launched a brutal assault against the coastal city of Valencia. After two weeks of fighting, it was the devastating fire of the Royalist navy that forced the Republicans out of their urban barricades. Video footage of Royalist troops executing captured Rebel fighters caused outrage around the world as did similar videos of Republicans hanging civilians deemed to be helping the Royalists. While the Republican Rebels lost ground in southern Spain, by the end of 1983 they managed to capture nearly all of the Royalist garrisons along the Pyrenees and the French and Andorran border.
The year of 1984 proved to be the bloodiest year of the Spanish Civil War. For the Royalists, German equipment including assault rifles, vehicles, and helicopters allowed them to retake Leon in February, 1984. However, this would prove to be the high water mark for the Monarchists. In April, 1984, the Republicans mounted a large offensive in the center of the country and captured Avila, Zamora, and Salamanca, thus splitting the country in two. In September, 1984, an attempt by the Monarchists to push back the Republicans ended in failure thanks in part to Franco-Italian supplied MC-9 anti-cataphract missiles. Rebel guerrillas continued to gain strength and by the end of the year had made communication and resupply extremely difficult for the Royalists. The rebels even managed to regain Valencia. On October 17, 1984, the Moroccan Army invaded the Spanish royalist-held colonies of Tangiers, Cueta, Melilla, and Spanish Sahara with the secret approval of the Republican Rebel government. While King Juan IV tried to play off this setback as ultimately inconsequential, the loss of Spain’s North African territories had as large effect. Tangiers was not only an important shipping center but also had several military depots and currency reserves crucial for the war effort. Monarchist efforts to retaliate proved futile.
As the year of 1985 began, the Republicans had regained the momentum against the Royalists. By the autumn, the Royalists under the command of Generalissimo Xavier Felicaino de la Rosa were reduced to the regions of Andalusia, Murcia, parts of La Mancha, the Balearic Islands and the Canary Islands. In November, 1985, the Republicans finally captured Murica after three weeks of bloody street-to-street fighting. On March 28, 1986, the Republicans launched their offensive towards Seville, finally capturing the city on April 5, 1986. Cordoba fell by the end of April. Seeing the writing on the wall, the Royalists decided to flee as the Republicans arrived at Seville. With German assistance, King Juan IV and his ministers decamped for Palma in the Balearic Islands. Other Royalists, both military and civilian, escaped to the Canary Islands. By May, 1986, the Republicans had finally secured all of mainland Spain.
As the Republicans lacked any kind of real navy, seizing the Royalist-held Canary and Balearic Islands proved to be beyond their reach. As a result, a ceasefire went into effect on June 13, 1986. The Republican government in Madrid and the Royalist/Carlist government in Palma de Mallorca both refused to recognize each other and to sign a comprehensive peace treaty. Thus, the establishment of “Two Spains” would prove to be an annoyance for many foreign governments in the subsequent years, as they had to decide which Spanish government to recognize. The nations of the Turin Pact, the LAR and the British Commonwealth recognized the Republic of Spain, while the nations of the AES and the Orthodox Council recognized the Kingdom of Spain. In spite of the unresolved issue of the legitimate Spanish government and a peace treaty to officially end to the Spanish Civil War, most international governments were just happy and relieved to see the bloodshed in Spain come to an end. Out of the prewar Spanish population of 39 million, up to 900,000 had been killed during the Spanish Civil War (1983-1986) and three to four million had fled abroad, mostly to the United States, Canada, Latin America, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa.
In the years after the end of the Spanish Civil War, King Juan IV continued to consolidate his government’s control over the Canary Islands and the Balearic Islands. Over the next thirty-two years of his reign, King Juan IV would prove himself to be a competent yet difficult monarch of the Kingdom of Spain. The most significant event of the latter part of his reign was the strengthening of ties between the Kingdom of Spain and the German Empire and the other nations of the AES. King Juan IV made a state visit to Berlin in July, 1990 and met personally with Kaiser Wilhelm III of Germany (1941- ), leading to some tension between the AES and the Turin Pact. Throughout the 1990s and 2000s, the issue of the two Spains would lead to low-level tensions between the AES and the Turin Pact. Throughout the 2000s, and 2010s, numerous attempts to solve the “Two Spain Problem” by the Turin Pact, AES, British Commonwealth and the LAR came to nothing. It was also during the latter part of his reign that the Balearic and Canary Islands became tourist hotspots for the central and eastern European elite and important ports-of-call for the German military, especially the German High Seas Fleet. The Balearic and Canary islands also became a hotspot for German, Scandinavian, Dutch, Belgian, Czech, Slovakian, Slovenian, Hungarian, Croatian, and later Polish and Baltic tourists, bringing in a lot of money into the economy of the small kingdom.
Starting in 2017, King Juan IV was in noticeably poor health, and according to leaked reports he was allegedly near-death, although the Royal Spanish press denied it. The following year, on August 24, 2018, after over forty years on the Spanish throne, King Juan IV died in his bed in Palma de Mallorca at the age of 79. His eldest son Carlos, Prince of Asturias succeeded him as king of Spain, thus becoming King Carlos X. While some in the Republic of Spain celebrated the death of King Juan IV, many used his death to make light of the economic stagnation that had gripped the nation for much of the last two decades. Some even postulated that the ascent of the younger and somewhat more progressive King Carlos X might one day lead to an eventual reunification of the two Spains.