Obituaries : Juan de Borbon; Father of Spain’s King Juan Carlos

Juan de Borbon, 79, father of Spain’s King Juan Carlos and pretender to the Spanish throne during the Franco regime. The third son of King Alfonso XIII and Queen Victoria Eugenia, Don Juan, as he was known, was born in Segovia in 1913. He became heir to the Spanish throne at age 20 after his older brothers, Alfonso, a hemophiliac, and Jaime, a deaf-mute, renounced their rights of succession in 1933. Dictator Francisco Franco, whose forces won the Spanish Civil War in 1939, declared Spain a monarchy in 1947 with himself as life regent. In 1969, Franco selected Don Juan’s eldest son, Juan Carlos, as heir apparent. Juan Carlos assumed the throne after Franco’s death in 1975. On Thursday in Pamplona, Spain, of cancer.