The State : Juan Carlos Tours Carmel

Spain’s King Juan Carlos I dedicated the Clint Eastwood Youth Program for drug abusers and met the film star for whom the Carmel center is named. Eastwood, the mayor of Carmel, greeted the monarch during a visit to Community Hospital Recovery Program. Later Juan Carlos strolled along Carmel’s picturesque main street and toured the Carmel Mission, the hub of Spain’s missionary system in California more than 200 years ago. The king was met by half a dozen Indians who were protesting Spain’s treatment of their ancestors during the Colonial era. Later in Monterey, Juan Carlos dedicated a statue of Don Gaspar de Portola, the Spanish explorer who founded the city as a military garrison. On Friday, the king said in a speech at the University of California, Berkeley, that the discovery of America and the colonization of California was Spain’s “great achievement in history.” His visit is the first by a ruling Spanish monarch to California.