Sarah Ferguson, Duchess of York and ex-wife of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, has taken refuge at the prestigious Paracelsus Recovery Clinic in Zurich after details emerged about her friendship with convicted financier Jeffrey Epstein. Ferguson, 66, has not appeared in public since the christening of her granddaughter Athenea, held on December 12 at St. James's Palace. According to the British newspaper Daily Mail, Ferguson was admitted to the luxury clinic for several weeks, with treatments valued at 15,000 euros per day, staying in a penthouse overlooking a lake and enjoying a private chauffeur and chef. Her escape from the UK coincides with the publication of an email from 2011 demonstrating that she had continued to maintain contact with Epstein once the tycoon had already been accused of having sexual relations with minors.

Andreu Mountbatten Windsor and Joan Carles I are distant relatives: third cousins separated by one generation. In a search of the former Spanish head of state within the more than 3.5 million declassified files by the United States Department of Justice about the pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, the name of Joan Carles appears on few occasions, at least under his identity or as King or King of Spain. So far, the most revealing message found by ARA refers more to Corinna Larsen, his ex-lover, than to the monarch himself. Epstein refers to her in a reply addressed to Olivier Colom, former diplomatic advisor to former French president Nicolas Sarkozy: "[...] He is trying to involve us in business in Russia. I have never met him, but he doesn't give me a good feeling." It is an email from 2013, one year before his abdication. Andreu, a black sheep of European royalty as much as Joan Carles –there are many more, as the mentioned archives demonstrate–, may end up, more or less, the same way as the Bourbon: seeking refuge in the Middle East with the aim of saving the British Crown from the shame of having him under its roof, just as the Zarzuela has saved itself from the emeritus after all the string of scandals that have tarnished him. This is the opinion of historian Andrew Lownie, author of the book Entitled: The rise and fall of the House of York [Authorized: rise and fall of the House of York], an unauthorized biography about the abuses and privileges of the third son of the late Queen Elizabeth II and brother of Charles III. "I don't think he will stay at Sandringham [a property of the King, in Norfolk, about 160 kilometers northeast of London]. I think he will spend time in the Middle East. Andrew does a lot of business in Bahrain and there are also links to Abu Dhabi and Qatar... He will travel there like his relative, King [Emeritus] Joan Carles I of Spain," he said this week, during a press briefing with members of the Foreign Press Association of London, which this correspondent attended. And he added: "It is likely that Andrew will go to a country without an extradition treaty. The last thing the royal family wants is a trial that brings their dirty laundry to light and undermines the monarchy. But if people took accountability seriously, he would be forced to testify before the House of Commons." A demand that some MPs are beginning to voice.