By Julien Toyer SWISSINFO

MADRID (Reuters) – Spain’s King Juan Carlos I came under intense media fire on Sunday for hunting elephants in Botswana when his country was being sucked back into the euro zone’s financial crisis and one young Spaniard out of two was unemployed.

Spanish media pointed to the cost of his trip and criticised the lack of transparency of the Royal Household, three months after it promised to disclose its income following a corruption probe linked to the king’s son-in-law.

The royal holiday last week would have remained secret if the king had not tripped on a step, fractured his hip and had to be flown back urgently to Madrid to undergo hip replacement surgery on Saturday morning.

Juan Carlos called on Spanish leaders in his annual Christmas message to set a good example and, more recently, he said there were times when he could not sleep because of concern about Spain’s youth unemployment problem.

Last week he cancelled his regular weekly meeting with Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy because he had already left for Botswana, several newspapers said.

“It was an irresponsible trip, taken at the worst possible moment,” the daily El Mundo said in an editorial. “The image of a monarch hunting elephants in Africa at a time when the economic crisis in our country creates so many problems for the Spanish people is a very poor example.”

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Note by the editor: Poor Kings. Nothing to say at home and cannot even go on holidays in peace…