New revelations about the personal life of honorary King Juan Carlos I continue to stir Spanish society. This time, the focus is on his years-long secret relationship with renowned photojournalist Keka Campillo. Their affair, carefully hidden from the public eye, lasted almost three decades, becoming one of the monarch’s best-kept secrets. Those who knew Keka, who passed away in 2015, describe her as a vibrant and cheerful woman who remained absolutely loyal and silent about her relationship with the king until the very end.
The veil of secrecy was lifted by the photojournalist’s daughter, Carmen. She decided to share her mother’s story, as Keka herself never had the chance. Cancer cut her life short and prevented her from writing the memoirs she hoped would tell her story. “The illness didn’t let her tell her life, and I became the keeper of that wish. It’s part of my story too, so I wanted to share it myself,” Carmen explained. She remembers her mother with immense pride—a woman who gave birth to her at 21, raised her alone, and worked tirelessly. Today, Carmen, a lawyer by training, is herself a mother of two and carefully preserves her famous mother’s photographic legacy.
Keka and Juan Carlos met in the 1980s. At the time, she was married to journalist Javier Rodrigo. Their affair began with the help of Sabino Fernández Campo, who headed the Royal Household from 1990 to 1993. He arranged their secret meetings in a van parked in the wooded area of El Pardo near Madrid. “Sometimes he would call our house, and I knew it was him, the king, asking for my mother. We had to get used to his invisible presence in our lives,” Carmen recalls.
Their relationship lasted 29 years. Throughout this time, Keka was not just a lover but also a loyal keeper of the monarch’s secrets. She acted as a kind of intermediary between him and the press, helping to prevent leaks of unwanted information and control publications. It was Campillo, using her connections, who arranged for the retrieval of nude photos of Juan Carlos from print. Her loyalty to the monarchy was unwavering. Although the king assured her she was “the only one in his life,” Keka knew very well this wasn’t true. She was aware of his relationships with Bárbara Rey, Marta Gayá, and even the appearance of Corinna Larsen in the king’s life. This made her suspicious, but she never let it show and remained silent.
After retiring, Keka Campillo returned to her hometown of Cáceres. She began working on her memoirs, but a serious illness upended her plans. On May 4, 2015, she died from lung cancer. There were two photos at her funeral. One showed a smiling Keka with her trusted camera. The other, a large portrait, was among her favorites. “It was a photo of a girl she captured during the royal visit to Nepal—one of her last assignments,” her daughter recalled.
Incidentally, Juan Carlos I was head of the Spanish state from 1975 to 2014. He played a key role in Spain’s transition from dictatorship to democracy, earning enormous respect at home and abroad. However, the final years of his reign were marred by a series of scandals, including allegations of corruption and controversy over his private life. In 2014, he abdicated in favor of his son, who ascended the throne as Felipe VI. After his abdication and new financial investigations, Juan Carlos I left Spain in 2020 and has since lived mainly in Abu Dhabi.
