“My mother and my children know that it is impossible for the son or the father to have the will to commit a crime”

During the conversation, Urdangarin explained how he felt when he entered prison, the length of his detention and his release. One of the most moving moments, as he highlighted, was when he was able to be in Vitoria (Alava) with his mother, Claire Liebaert, combining nights in Alava prison, but with free weekends to be with her. “It was a very nice experience.” And she said she and her children were her main support. “My mother has always been my first support, as have my children, who know that what happened to me, it is impossible that the son or the father had the will to commit a crime,” he said.

He also referred to his ex-wife and assured that he still loves Infanta Cristina, despite the fact that they divorced in 2023. “Six years in prison and seven years of investigation and trial are very hard. Materially, I lost everything I had (…) and the very great loss which is one of the loves of my life, Cristina, a very difficult time and we had a very bad time. It hurts me because she is a woman I love very much,” he added.

“I cried a lot the first three months.”

The king’s former brother-in-law made these remarks during an interview he gave to the Catalan channel RTVE, broadcast this Thursday evening. This is Urdangarin’s first television interview after his stint at Cope Studios in 2022 and his appearance in another interview in ‘La Vanguardia’ in June. Urdangarin was married to Infanta Cristina de Borbón, between 1997 and 2023, and He was sentenced to five years and ten months in prison for embezzlement, prevarication, fraud, influence peddling and various crimes against the Treasury in the context of the Nóos affair.

After serving his sentence, Urdangarin focuses professionally on a project, halfway between Vitoria and Barcelona, manage human teams to help “people find the solutions they may need when problems or challenges arise.” A task in which he will use his sporting and academic experience (which he deepened in prison) and which he had to “apply first hand”. This can be “a golden opportunity to help others”, he said, after admitting that he was currently in a “very good time in his life, in a creative and interesting phase, working hard and building a team”.

Before getting there, Urdangarin admitted that the first three months after his admission to Brieva prison (Ávila) were very hard. Once the prison door is closed, “everything is over, everything collapses, you have nothing prepared.” And he revealed that he cried a lot: “The first three months I wasn’t doing well, I’m not proud of the way I handled my situation emotionally, I was in a negative loop and I was worrying people outside. “I cried a lot the first three months.” She entered Brieva, a women’s prison, because it was the most recommended place for her safety. “In round numbers, (I was in prison) about a thousand days and a thousand nights,” he said.

Memories, February 12

This Thursday, we also learned that the man who was also a player for FC Barcelona in the handball section, between 1986 and 2000, and an Olympic medalist, will publish, on February 12, his memoirs entitled: ‘Everything has been experienced. Triumphs, defeats and learning” (Grijalbo). This was announced by the Penguin Random House publishing house, stressing that it is “an intimate and sincere story in which the former athlete looks back on his childhood, his sporting career and his media exposure”.

According to the publisher, Urdangarin explains in his book “the most difficult years of his life and the path of his personal reinvention after his stay in prison”, after his story, especially personal, has been told until now by journalists, judges and talk shows. Thus, using an argument similar to that of his ex-father-in-law, King Juan Carlos I, who has just published his memoirs in Spanish, after having done so in France: “Reconciliation” (Planeta), which is becoming a bestseller, he also He wants his story to be told in the first person.

“Everyone seemed to know who I was, what I thought, what I did, why I did it. And I, in the middle of all this, chose silence. Out of caution, out of respect, out of fear, out of strategy… for many reasons. Good stuff. Others, not so much. Today, for the first time, I want to tell my story in my own voice. Neither to justify myself, nor to seek compassion, nor to cover up my mistakes. On the contrary: I am writing this book because I need to face everything I have experienced – the peaks, but also the valleys – and to share it honestly”, we can read in a fragment of Urdangarin’s work put forward by Grijalbo.