Inaki, the athlete who swept the Spanish monarchy

The cyclone that engulfed the monarchy of the very Catholic Spain is a pole measuring one meter ninety-seven, with broad shoulders and a square jaw. Captain of the Iberian national handball team first, then Duke of Palma de Mallorca, now detained in Brieva prison, in Avila, with an appeal in Appeal at 5 years and 10 months for a string of tax crimes, including fraud and embezzlement. His name is Inaki Urdangarin.

Who stands out for cunning, usually shrewd is born there. The real black sheep that we tell this week is no exception. However, if Inaki was able to express all his potential, the merit was his marriage to the Infanta Cristina di Borbone, third child of Juan Carlos, the king who gave Spain the constitutional aegis after the Franco regime, and the mild Sofia of Greece.

It all starts in 1996. Atlanta Olympics. Urdangarin and his 15 teammates win a nice bronze that the Spaniards – that will be the only medal they win at the Games – greet like a gold. On the terraces there is also a special observer: Princess Cristina. Which immediately proves interested in the subject. «Who is the one that the companions carry on their shoulders, triumphant? I want his number ". The same evening the Spanish party goes out to revel. Cristina does not call, but introduces herself. Time a couple of cocktails, a handshake and disappears.

They meet again for the festivities at home at the restaurant El Pou, a little place that Urdangarin had bought in partnership with some teammates, in Barcelona. And the next day she raises that blessed phone. Panamanist panic, confided to his closest friends: «The Infanta called me, wants to go out. And now what do I do? Where do I take it? " And indeed, from the dinners in the most popular restaurants in Barcelona to the Michael Jackson concert, it is Cristina who marks the beginning of their history. The Infanta is smart: the outings are always in a group. There are his friends and her faithful squire, cousin Alexia of Greece. First, not to tickle the press. Second, because Inaki already has a girlfriend: someone like Carmen Camì, who lives 90 kilometers from Barcelona. This allows Txiqui, as his intimates call him, to maintain two relationships. With the difference that Cristina knows about Carmen, but Carmen doesn't know about Cristina. Inaki is terrified of leaving his girlfriend. She fears to be just a pastime that the princess will soon be bored with. But Cristina does not get tired.

The illegality lasts six months. On 3 May 1997 the couple presented themselves to cameras and photographers in the Zarzuela gardens, the royal residence outside Madrid. She is in a jacket, pants and loose hair. Never had the air of a shy, romantic and submissive princess: she had fallen in love with a man and had taken it. Inaki and Cristina like them. To the king, first of all. And to the subjects: they immediately appear nice, sporty and easy to handle. Above all, they like the social mix they embody. Carmen, like millions of fellow citizens, discovers from her TV that her boyfriend is about to marry the Infanta. She is stunned, but resigned. She will disappear in the shadows and, with dignity, when the scandal breaks out, she will not throw herself on the carcass of the man who had humiliated her in front of all of Spain.

For Inaki and Cristina the children arrive, four. From a romantic pied-a-terre, in the center of Barcelona, ​​where he continues to play on the town's handball team, the family moves into a thousand and one night home in the Pedralbes area. The children attend the French school. Winters on the slopes of Baqueira, in the Pyrenees, summers in Palma de Mallorca, of which Cristina and Inaki become dukes by will of the king. They do not yet know that the Palma judges will be the ones to put them on the dock.

Giulio Andreotti said that "power wears out those who do not have it". But sometimes intoxicates like wormwood. Inaki changes skin. He is no longer the comradeship and goliardic team-mate that his friends remember. Become haughty, contemptuous. The small recommendation requests that arrive on his table end up in the trash. On the other hand, the charges begin to fall. In 2000 Urdangarin retires from competition. First a honorary member of the Spanish Olympic Committee, the following year he was appointed director of planning for Octagon Esedos, a company that operates in sports marketing. In 2003 he became a partner of the consultant Diego Torres and together they transformed an existing company, Noos, making it a non-profit company that offers various types of consultancy, including sports. With the Duke of Palma as president, companies are increasing – such as Telefonica or Repsol – and public institutions – we are talking about the Balearic Islands, the Valencian community and the city of Madrid – which pay huge sums (16 million euros, is the estimated turnover between 2002 and 2006) in Noos and, later, to its satellite companies.

But where does this river of money end? The question arises in civil society. These are the years in which the Spanish people begin to know the most serious economic crisis in its history. The first journalistic investigations into the affairs of Noos date back to 2006. It matters little that the duke formally leaves office, moving to Washington with his family. In July 2010, Palma's judiciary opened a file on Urdangarin which became the first member of the Bourbon house to end up under investigation (and then on trial). The prosecution reconstructs the path of 5.8 million euros, money distracted from the coffers of Noos and used by the duke for the renovation of the Pedralbes palace, whose domestic staff would have been paid in black, and then for travel, dinners and even to buy tickets for the Champions League final in 2009, played in Rome between Barcelona and Manchester United. In the trial papers some emails written by Inaki to certain ladies of the Spanish high society also end, with incipits from the more than confidential tenor: "Hello, a great piece of woman".

The judgment of Juan Carlos splits: as a father-in-law, he sees in Inaki the embodiment of the Iberian alpha male. A quality, given that he himself held the testosteronic level of the homeland by collecting over 1,500 lovers. But as king of Spain he must condemn the man who used the prestige of the crown to enrich himself unduly. An unforgivable betrayal.

The outrage is rampant: the monarchy and its ease in the waste of money become the enemy to be killed. Even the king is overwhelmed by the austerity claimed in a loud voice: the images that portray him next to the carcass of an elephant during a very dear safari in Botswana, while his people are forced to sell off the house to reach the end of the month, fill the measure . On June 19, 2014 Juan Carlos abdicated in favor of his son Felipe. To save the good repute of the monarchy, it is the new king who gives the coup de grace to his brother-in-law and his sister Cristina: he deprives them of any title and prohibits them from attending any public event. They will never have to set foot in Zarzuela again. Cristina, in the meantime excluded from all criminal responsibility, can choose: leave her husband, and be rehabilitated. Or stay with him, and suffer the ostracism. Choose the hardest road. And the humiliation of prison visits. On the other hand, that Basque boy had chosen her. And an infant from Spain doesn't take the word back. Never.