King of Spain’s ex-mistress teases tell-all memoir – as she opens up about intimate videos and says monarch ‘loved her more’

An ex-mistress of the disgraced Spanish King Juan Carlos has admitted she regrets making intimate photographs and films that were allegedly used to blackmail the royal family. 

Barbara Rey, 75, an actress and model, has teased a tell-all memoir which she claims is an attempt to counter a slew of claims made against her by her 44-year-old son Ángel Cristo.

Ms Rey – who is thought to have had a relationship with Juan Carlos in the late 1970s – has been accused of manipulating her teenage son into taking intimate photographs of her with the King.

It is alleged that this was an attempt to blackmail Juan Carlos, who abdicated the throne in 2014 and now lives in self-imposed exile in Abu Dhabi.

However, Ms Rey has denied her son’s claims, alleging it was her brother who took the photographs.

But in an interview ahead of the publication of her memoir, the Miss World contestant has admitted she did regret making the recordings, saying she was ‘induced to do it’.

Ms Rey told El Pais: ‘It wasn’t in my mind. But there they are, and that’s it. I’m sorry they saw the light of day. If it were up to me, they would never have seen it. I had nothing to do with it.’

She has previously confessed to effectively blackmailing the Spanish King with photographs and videos of them having sex, The Times reported. 

The former cabaret performer has alleged that the King paid the equivalent of €150,000 (£126,000) into a foreign bank account for her.

However, she did note that ‘neither he nor the courts have said it was blackmail’.

Me Rey also revealed ahead of the publication of her memoir this week that Juan Carlos ‘was more in love with me than I was with him’.

She said: ‘I don’t think falling in love is his strong suit … Maybe he’ll say it in his memoirs. I think he’s done a lot of good things for this country. The fact that he hasn’t behaved well with me doesn’t take away from his merit in other things.’

The King’s former mistress went on to reveal some intimate details of their trysts, noting that Juan Carlos did not give her major gifts – and ‘always smelled so good… clean as a jet of gold’.

An excerpt of the book – which will be published shortly before Juan Carlos’s own memoir – has been published by the El Mundo newspaper.

Within it, she describes how when she took these photographs, she was short of money and her sister was battling with cancer.

Ms Rey explains how once after they had sex, the King had ‘walked over to the nightstand and took a wad of bills held together by an elastic band from his inside jacket pocket’.

This was ‘so you can go and see your sister’, he said.

But rather than feel ‘cared for’, Ms Rey said she felt ‘violated’.

‘As if everything we had shared up until then could be reduced to just that: a silent, cold transaction.’ 

Ms Rey was a model who won runner-up in Miss Spain 1970 but was given the chance to compete at Miss World the following year after Spain’s top-place finisher withdrew from the contest.

Competing under her original name Maria Garcia, she finished in the top 15 behind Brazil’s Lúcia Petterle in first place with the UK’s Marilyn Ann Ward runner-up.

Her big break came four years later, when she was cast in TV show Palmarés which established her as a sex symbol. She went on to play theatres and revenue shows, worked on TV, and later starred in erotic films.

In 1980 she married a circus lion tamer, Ángel Cristo, with whom she has two children. The pair divorced in 1998.

She is understood to have had an affair with King Juan Carlos in the late 1970s – when he was still married to his wife Queen Sofia – but it remains unclear how the pair met.

Juan Carlos reigned as King of Spain from 1975 to 2014 when he abdicated in favour of his son Felipe VI. He has three children with his wife of 75 years Sofia.

He is alleged to have been a serial adulterer, with an author and military historian claiming he had 5,000 lovers in a recent book.

Juan Carlos is said to have made a pass at Princess Diana as she holidayed with King Charles at his Majorca palace in 1986 – with the princess once saying he could be a ‘little too attentive’ during meetings.

Danish-German philanthropist Corinna Larsen, Spanish singer Sara Montiel, Belgian governess Liliane Sartiau and Italian princess Maria Gabriela de Saboya are just some of the women he is rumoured to have bedded besides his wife.

The 83-year-old left Spain for Abu Dhabi after Swiss prosecutors opened an investigation into bank accounts he allegedly held in tax havens.

Juan Carlos denies any wrongdoing and has said he is available if prosecutors need to interview him.