His Majesty the King Juan Carlos
His Majesty the King don Juan Carlos I was born on 5 January 1938 in Rome where the Royal Family was living, having had to leave Spain when the Republic was proclaimed in 1931. His parents were Juan de Borbon y Battenberg, Count of Barcelona and Head of the Spanish Royal Household since his father, King Alfonso XIII, relinquished this status, and Maria de las Mercedes de Borbon y Orleans.
At the express wish of his father, he was educated in Spain as from the age of ten, after a period as a boarder at the Marianist school in the Swiss town of Fribourg. His parents, meanwhile, had been living since 1946 in the coastal town of Estoril in Portugal.
His education
In 1954 he completed his secondary education at San Isidro School in Madrid and then went on to study at the Military Academies and Colleges of the Army, the Navy and the Air Force reaching the rank of Officer. During that period, he went to sea as a midshipman on the "Juan Sebastian Elcano" training ship, and also qualified as a military pilot. He completed his education from 1960 to 1961 at the Complutense University, Madrid, where he studied constitutional and international law, economics and taxation.
On 14 May 1962, in Athens, he married HRH Princess Sofia of Greece, the eldest daughter of King Paul I and Queen Federica. After their honeymoon, the Prince and Princess went to live at La Zarzuela Palace just outside Madrid which is still their residence today. Their first daughter, HRH the Infanta Elena, was born in 1963, followed two years later by HRH the Infanta Cristina and in 1968 by HRH Prince Felipe.