English courts have no jurisdiction over sovereign heads of foreign states. However, in a unique decision, the High Court has ruled that His Majesty Juan Carlos has not met that description since he abdicated the throne of Spain to his son in 2014.
The case concerned a harassment claim against Juan Carlos being pursued in this country by a woman with whom he enjoyed a personal relationship for several years, starting in 2004. She alleged, amongst other things, that she had, at his direction or with his consent, been subjected to covert surveillance and that he had supplied false and damaging information about her to the media.
He denied all her allegations and asserted that, by virtue of the State Immunity Act 1978, the English courts in any event had no power to hear her case. He contended that, notwithstanding his abdication, he continued to enjoy immunity as a sovereign in his own right or as part of his son King Felipe VI’s household. He said that he did not place himself above the law, but that he was subject only to the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court of Spain.
Following a preliminary hearing, however, the Court rejected his claim to personal and lifelong sovereign immunity. It noted that, if his arguments were correct, he could walk into a Hatton Garden jewellery store and steal a diamond ring without fear of facing civil or criminal proceedings in England, unless the Spanish state were to waive his immunity. Although he retained certain privileges due to his special and unprecedented status as ‘king emeritus’ under the law and constitution of Spain, there was clearly only one Spanish king and head of state, his son.
The Court found that Juan Carlos’s membership of King Felipe VI’s family did not, by itself, render him part of the royal household. After his abdication, his position under the Spanish constitution became entirely honorary. He had no constitutional role to perform. Since his retirement from public life, he had performed no public functions in support of the royal family or the Spanish state. Having moved to the United Arab Emirates in 2020, he did not even live in Spain.
The Court accepted that it might be possible to establish state immunity in respect of certain individual alleged acts of harassment that were said to have occurred whilst Juan Carlos remained king. Others, however, did not even arguably fall within the sphere of governmental or sovereign activity and could attract no such immunity. The claims of immunity in respect of the action as a whole having failed, the Court opened the way for the woman’s claim to proceed.