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In his much-awaited memoir,<\/a> Spain’s exiled king Juan Carlos I<\/a> details for the first time his lasting sadness over the death<\/a> of his brother, Alfonso, whom he shot in a firearms accident at the family\u2019s home in exile in Portugal in 1956.<\/p>\n The memoir, published this week in France under the title Juan Carlos I d\u2019Espagne: R\u00e9conciliation<\/em>, is written with the French author Laurence Debray and divided into seven parts.<\/p>\n The former monarch<\/a> recounts his childhood in exile and the first tragedy that “marked him forever”, the death of his brother Alfonso de Borb\u00f3n, while the two were playing with a gun. “I didn\u2019t like to talk about it, and this is the first time I do,” he writes.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n He wrote: “We had no idea there was a bullet left in the chamber \u2026 He died in my father\u2019s arms. There is a before and an after. It is still difficult for me to speak of it, and I think of it every day \u2026 I miss him; I wish I could have him by my side and talk with him. I lost a friend, a confidant.<\/p>\n “He left me with an immense emptiness. Without his death, my life would have been less dark, less unhappy.”<\/p>\n Juan Carlos, then aged 18, and Alfonso, aged 14, had been apparently playing with a Star Bonifacio Echeverria automatic pistol owned by Alfonso.<\/p>\n The former Spanish monarch<\/a> explained that the pistol’s magazine had been removed so he had thought it posed no danger.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Their father, the Count of Barcelona, reportedly grabbed him by the neck and said: “Swear to me that you didn\u2019t do it on purpose!”<\/p>\n The book, divided into seven parts, will be published in Spanish in December<\/a>, to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the death of Franco and the restoration of the monarchy.<\/p>\n The memoir also reveals the moment that the dictator Francisco Franco summoned him to anoint him as his heir, changing the course of Spanish history.<\/p>\n