The Supreme Court has rejected a paternity lawsuit filed against the former Spanish king, Juan Carlos, who abdicated last June.
The case had originally been accepted by the court in January, but now the justices have decided to close and shelve the case brought by Ingrid Sartiau, a 48-year-old Belgian woman, who claims to be the daughter of the ex-monarch.
In January, magistrates at the Supreme Court rejected another paternity lawsuit filed by Albert Solá Jiménez, a Spaniard born in Barcelona in 1956.
The two paternity suits were presented in the ordinary courts in 2012 when Juan Carlos I was still the head of state and judges rejected the cases at that time due to the immunity that the king enjoyed.
However, after the monarch abdicated in June 2014, the plaintiffs refiled the lawsuits, which were passed on to the Supreme Court after Spain’s parliament approved special immunity status for the former king from the lower courts.