Once the most glamorous king in Europe, now living in self-imposed exile in Abu Dhabi, Juan Carlos I is reportedly eyeing a return home to Spain.
The ageing ex-monarch was forced to abdicate the throne in 2014 in favour of his son, Felipe, under a cloud of scandal.
Since then, he has been chased by multiple investigations into allegations of bribery and embezzlement.
He was also mired in an ongoing legal battle with a former lover, who alleges he ordered Spanish spies to break into her home as part of a campaign of harassment against her.
But with all probes against him now shelved or dismissed, Juan Carlos reportedly believes he has one more obstacle to clear before he can go home.
The so-called "emeritus king" is convinced the current Socialist-led government is blocking his return, according to Spanish media.
If it loses to the conservative People's Party (PP) in today's election, Juan Carlos will reportedly pack up his Abu Dhabi home and move back into the Zarzuela Palace.
Many older Spaniards remember Juan Carlos's reign fondly, but not everyone would welcome the return of the former king.
His son, King Felipe, has worked hard to distance himself from his scandal-ridden predecessor, renouncing his inheritance and seeing his father only once since he went into exile.
While he and his wife, Queen Letizia, bring just as much glamour to the throne as his parents, Felipe's reign has been marked by austerity and transparency.
With Spaniards more divided than ever on the future of the monarchy, the last thing Felipe needs is a scandal-prone king living in his kingdom.
A dictator, an accidental shooting and a coup d'état
Juan Carlos was never meant to be king.
When he was born in 1938, his grandfather King Alfonso XIII had been toppled from the throne and exiled so Spain could become a republic.
Soon the country was ruled by Generalissimo Francisco Franco, a dictator who killed tens of thousands of people during his brutal four-decade rule.
The exiled House of Bourbon-Anjou lived a life of luxury in Italy and Portugal.
But in 1956, a mysterious tragedy involving two princes and a pistol became Juan Carlos's first scandal.
Prince Juan Carlos, then 18, was in a room with his 14-year-old brother Alfonso at their family's palatial villa on the Portuguese Riviera.
Only Juan Carlos knows exactly what happened, and he refuses to discuss the incident.
Conflicting accounts suggest the teens were either cleaning a Long Automatic Star revolver or jokingly pointing it at each other when it went off.
Alfonso was shot in the face and died instantly.
After learning of his son's death, his father Juan of Bourbon reportedly grabbed Juan Carlos by the neck and shouted at him: "Swear to me that you didn't do it on purpose."
Juan of Bourbon never forgave his son, but he relentlessly tried to restore the Spanish throne on his behalf.
At Juan of Bourbon's behest, Generalissimo Franco grew close to the young prince and became convinced that Juan Carlos should succeed him and maintain his hardline regime.
But Juan Carlos had other plans.
When Franco died in 1975, he became king and immediately began transitioning Spain to a constitutional monarchy with a democratically elected parliament.
Spain's outraged military launched a coup d'état in 1981, with 150 armed men storming parliament and taking everyone inside the chamber hostage.
But King Juan Carlos, dressed in his military uniform to signal that he was the true head of the armed forces, gave a fiery televised address denouncing the coup attempt.
"The crown, the symbol of the permanence and unity of the nation, cannot tolerate, in any form, actions or attitudes of people attempting by force to interrupt the democratic process," he said.
Any pockets of public support for the coup soon vanished, and Juan Carlos was celebrated as the hero who saved Spain from sliding back into its brutal past.
"It's the foundational myth of the Spanish democracy," Spanish writer and historian, Javier Cerca, said in 2021.
"At that moment, two centuries of military interventionism in Spain ended … Francoism ended and democracy began."
The father of democracy's fall from grace
For decades, Juan Carlos and his wife Queen Sofia were the most popular royals in Europe.
The dashing king flew helicopters, rode motorbikes and enjoyed a close relationship with his third cousin, Queen Elizabeth II.
The British royals often visited the House of Bourbon-Anjou at their Spanish holiday home, though Princess Diana, then 26, described King Juan Carlos as "charming, but a little too attentive".
Juan Carlos's image of perfection started to crack in 2012.
The king and his lover, Danish aristocrat Corinna zu Sayn-Wittgenstein-Sayn, quietly went on an elephant-hunting safari together in Botswana.
The trip might have stayed secret, but the king fell and broke his hip, requiring he be flown back to Madrid for treatment.
His subjects were still mired in recession and suffering an unemployment rate of 23 per cent. They started to question why their king would spend $88,000 on a lavish holiday.
"The spectacle of a monarch hunting elephants in Africa while the economic crisis in our country causes so many problems for Spaniards transmits an image of indifference and frivolity," wrote El Mundo, Spain's leading conservative newspaper.
At the same time, Juan Carlos's daughter Princess Christina was named as a formal suspect in a long-running inquiry into allegations of money laundering and tax evasion.
She would later be cleared of involvement in her husband's scheme, but the lavish spending and allegations of financial crimes threatened to bring down the Spanish monarchy.
Like his father before him, Juan Carlos realised he had to sacrifice himself to save the crown and his son's future.
In 2014, he abdicated, saying he was motivated by "a drive for renewal, to overcome and correct mistakes and open the way to a decidedly better future".
But even after taking off the crown, King Emeritus Juan Carlos could not remove the stench of scandal from himself.
In 2020, his now ex-lover Sayn-Wittgenstein told Swiss authorities that when she and the former king were together, she helped him hide millions of dollars in Swiss bank accounts and Monaco property acquisitions.
The money, she claimed, was a "gift" from the King of Saudi Arabia to Juan Carlos after he helped a Spanish consortium land an $11 billion contract to build a high-speed rail line to Mecca.
A Spanish investigation of the alleged kickback was opened and soon expanded to look at Juan Carlos's charities, which appeared to be nothing more than shell entities to line the king's coffers.
With the scandal threatening to burn down the House of Bourbon-Anjou, King Felipe made his move.
He announced that he would not take a single dollar of his inheritance when his father died, and also stripped Juan Carlos of his annual taxpayer-funded stipend.
Juan Carlos ended up where he began: Living on the kindness of wealthy friends abroad.
While he is still technically married to his wife Queen Sofia, she declined to join him in exile, instead remaining in Madrid by her son's side.
Return of the king?
After three years in the wilderness, the financial probes into Juan Carlos have now been shelved.
Under Spanish law, he enjoys constitutional immunity from prosecution for anything he did while king.
Sayn-Wittgenstein also launched legal action against Juan Carlos in 2020, alleging that he caused her "great mental pain" by spying on and harassing her after their relationship broke down.
She told a London court last week that intruders sent by Juan Carlos broke into her apartment and left behind a book about the death of Princess Diana.
Sayn-Wittgenstein also claimed she received an anonymous phone call warning her that she could suffer a similar fate to the British royal, who died in a car crash in 1997.
Juan Carlos has "emphatically" denied a campaign of harassment against his former lover.
However, he managed to have Sayn-Wittgenstein's case thrown out of court by successfully arguing that he was "immune from the jurisdiction of UK courts before his abdication in 2014".
No longer in legal jeopardy, Juan Carlos has been slowly moving back into the spotlight.
Against his son's explicit wishes, he flew to London to attend his third cousin Queen Elizabeth's funeral last year.
He has also made two brief and unannounced trips back to Spain to attend an annual yacht race in Sanxenxo.
Last year, when asked by reporters if he had any explanation for the Spanish people about his behaviour, the former king laughed.
"Explanations for what?" he said.
Today's vote could have a profound impact on where Juan Carlos spends his twilight years.
Polls suggest neither party will be able to form a majority, but if the PP forms a coalition with the right-wing Vox Party, Juan Carlos could return to Spain permanently.
"The PP is a constitutional party and we have the utmost respect for the monarchy, key to our democratic system," PP leader Alberto Feijóo said.
"The King Emeritus has been a key figure in our history, he has no pending cases and any decision on his personal sphere corresponds to him and the royal household."
Last year, a poll by Spanish news site El Confidencial found 39 per cent of Spaniards supported replacing the monarchy with a republic.
Support for the crown was at 38.9 per cent.
In recent months, King Felipe has tried to modernise the crown to "make it worthy of the respect and trust of citizens under the principles of setting an example, transparency, rectitude and integrity in its behaviour".
Last September, he made public his personal assets and finances, totalling $4.26 million, mostly accumulated from annual stipends paid when he was the heir apparent.
While Spain's fractious political landscape makes a referendum on the monarchy unlikely in the near future, commentators say the potential return of Juan Carlos is bad news for his son.
"Whatever Felipe does, he is always embarrassed by his father," Pilar Eyre, a royal watcher, told Euronews.