Event :King Juan Carlos and Svetlana Medvedeva Attend the Russian Ballet at the Theatre Royal in Madrid

Event :King Juan Carlos, Queen Sofia and Svetlana Medvedeva Attend the Russian Ballet at the Theatre Royal in Madrid

Event :King Juan Carlos, Queen Sofia and Svetlana Medvedeva Attend the Russian Ballet at the Theatre Royal in Madrid

Event :King Juan Carlos, Queen Sofia and Svetlana Medvedeva Attend the Russian Ballet at the Theatre Royal in Madrid

Event :King Juan Carlos, Queen Sofia and Svetlana Medvedeva Attend the Russian Ballet at the Theatre Royal in Madrid

Event :King Juan Carlos and Queen Sofia Attend the Russian Ballet at the Theatre Royal in Madrid

Event :King Juan Carlos and Queen Sofia Attend the Russian Ballet at the Theatre Royal in Madrid

Event : King Juan Carlos Attend the Russian Ballet at the Theatre Royal in Madrid

The Spanish foreign minister said after the Spain's King Juan Carlos and the US chief executive shared a working lunch at the White House that President Barack Obama has King Juan Carlos that he would like to visit the Iberian nation.

Miguel Angel Moratinos said at a press conference on Wednesday, following the meeting that Obama recalled past journeys to Spain and expressed a desire to return, but there was no discussion of dates or an agenda.

Madrid - Spain's King Juan Carlos, 71, has changed his look again and shaved off the short beard he sported for two months, media reports said Tuesday.

The monarch appeared without the beard at National Day celebrations on Monday.

"Many men let their beard grow in the summer, feel better without shaving and then comes autumn and they shave it off," royal palace protocol chief Alberto Aza was quoted as saying.

Madrid - Whistling at Spain's King Juan Carlos is not a criminal offence, according to a court ruling quoted by media reports on Wednesday.

Thousands of Basque and Catalan football fans protested the presence of the king and Queen Sofia at a national cup final football match between Athletic Bilbao and Barcelona in May.

The fans, who supported separatist movements seeking the independence of the two northern regions, displayed banners reading: "We are nations of Europe. Good-bye Spain."

Madrid  - Indian President Pratibha Patil was Tuesday welcomed by Spain's King Juan Carlos and Queen Sofia after arriving Monday for the first official visit by an Indian head of state to Spain.

The four-day visit was expected to focus on stepping up trade relations, investments, and on the fight against terrorism, diplomats said.

The Spanish royal couple welcomed Patil and her husband Devisingh Ransingh Shekhawat in front of El Pardo palace.

Madrid  - Spain's King Juan Carlos was received with republican protests when visiting a mining region in Asturias in the north, the daily El Mundo said Friday.

The monarch had to bear with flags of Spain's 1931-36 Second Republic, shouts of "long live the republic" and loudspeakers playing the republican anthem on his way to visit a coal miners' training centre in Sama de Langreo on Thursday.

Madrid  - A southern Spanish mayor is under investigation by prosecutors in view of possibly charging him with insults to King Juan Carlos, press reports said Friday.

Juan Antonio Barroso, mayor of the town of Puerto Real near Cadiz, described the 70-year-old monarch as "corrupt," "son of bastards" and "despicable."

The Bourbon monarchy was historically corrupt, Barroso charged.

The politician belonging to the republican far-left party Izquierda Unida was speaking at an act commemorating the establishment of Spain's 1931-39 Second Republic.

Barroso faces up to two years in prison for insults to the crown.

Madrid  - Spain's King Juan Carlos on Wednesday presented Argentine poet Juan Gelman, 77, with the Cervantes Prize, regarded as the literature Nobel of the Spanish-speaking world.

The wounds left by Argentina's 1976-83 military dictatorship "have not yet been closed," but "beat in the underground of society like a cancer without finding peace," said Gelman, a human rights campaigner whose son was killed by soldiers, and whose daughter-in-law disappeared.

The dictatorship drove Gelman into exile in Italy, France and later to Mexico, where he still lives.