Madrid - Spain's royal family lurched towards a new low point in what could be their most serious credibility crisis in decades on Wednesday when King Juan Carlos's daughter, Princess Cristina, was named as a suspect in a multi-million-euro fraud and money-laundering case involving her husband, Inaki Urdangarin.
For the first time since modern Spanish democracy began in the mid-1970s, an inside member of the country's monarchy will now have to respond to a court summons in Palma de Mallorca on 27 April.
As yet nobody has been charged in the case. But it has been gripping Spain for the past two years, thanks to the spiral of allegations concerning Urdangarin and the syphoning off of millions of euros of public money from regional government contracts to the supposedly non-profit making organisation, Noos, he co-directed from 2004 to 2006.
Since 2011, a welter of gory financial details from the case - alleged tax dodges of more than half a million euros via an NGO for children with terminal illnesses and the liberal use of offshore companies - has been leaking steadily from Spain's judicial system on to the front pages.
The royal family have been trying to distance themselves from Urdangarin, a former Olympic handball player who received the title of the Duke of Palma when he married Princess Cristina in 1997. More than a year ago, in December 2011, Urdangarin was suspended from all official royal engagements.
In two court appearances, Urdangarin has proclaimed his innocence and insisted his wife had no knowledge of his activities, despite her being a Noos board member. But according to the media, emails have now emerged that appear to indicate that Princess Cristina had some degree of knowledge of her husband's financial affairs. - The Independent