Spanish justice - Royal faces prison sentence

Princess Cristina, the sister of Spain’s King Felipe VI, will become the first member of the royal family to stand in the dock after a judge yesterday ordered her to be put on trial on charges of tax fraud.

To some members of Europe’s glitterati, the notion of a royal facing a possible jail sentence would appear unthinkable, yet that shows just how far democracy in Spain has progressed, moving from dictatorship under Francisco Franco until his death in 1975 and the emergence of a constitutional monarchy in the early 1980s. Ironically, it was Cristina’s father, King Juan Carlos, who solidified democracy by facing down an attempted coup in 1982.

The case is a major problem for King Felipe, who took the throne in June after his father’s abdication, promising an “honest and transparent monarchy”.