— ITALY: Silvio Berlusconi, the long-serving Teflon leader accused of everything from bedding escorts to serial corruption, finally bites the dust in November 2011. He resigns to cheers and jeers as investors lose confidence in his ability to spur economic growth and rein in debt. It’s the end of a political era. Mario Monti, a former European Commissioner, is named to replace him and lead a technical government until elections in 2013.

— BRITAIN: Gordon Brown leads the Labour Party to defeat in the May 2010 election; Conservative Party leader David Cameron becomes leader of a coalition government. Brown had been finance chief for a decade before succeeding Tony Blair in 2007. Brown had boasted endlessly of ending the cycle of boom and bust — but as prime minister he presided mostly over bust.

— IRELAND: Brian Cowen, promoted to prime minister in 2008 after being finance minister, doesn’t even get to run. He resigns as leader of the Fianna Fail Party weeks before the February, 2011 election. It doesn’t help his party, which suffers its worst ever defeat. Cowen was finance minister during Ireland’s banking crisis and the collapse of its housing bubble.

— GREECE: Greek Socialist leader George Papandreou swept to power in October 2009 over conservative opponents, pledging to spend his way out of a deteriorating economic situation. Two years later, at the height of Greece’s worst financial crisis since World War II, Papandreou’s own deputies force him out after he endangers a hard-won bailout by announcing he would put it to a referendum. He’s replaced by caretaker Prime Minister Lucas Papademos.

— PORTUGAL: A month after Portugal requests a 78 billion-euro bailout, the center-left Socialist government of Jose Socrates is voted out of power in June, 2011. Portugal’s woes stemmed from a decade of feeble growth as it failed to modernize amid increasing global competition and dug itself deeper into debt.

— DENMARK: A center-right government in Denmark loses power in September in part due to discontent over austerity measures introduced amid the debt crisis. It is replaced by a center-left coalition.

— FINLAND: Finland’s government is reconfigured after June elections following a sharp surge in support for nationalists who oppose bailouts for debt-stricken eurozone countries. A conservative-led coalition spanning left and right is formed to keep the nationalist True Finns out of power.

Bucking the Trend:

— ROMANIA: Romanian President Traian Basescu wins re-election in 2009, the year Romania’s economy shrinks by 7 percent and Romania takes a 20 billion-euro bailout loan from the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the European Union. Basescu, a former ship captain, prevails because he is seen as a strong leader in a time of crisis.

— POLAND: This has been a rare European success story: It’s the only European Union country that did not to slip into recession during the global crisis of 2008-2009. Last fall the center-right party of Prime Minister Donald Tusk wins a second straight term in parliamentary elections, making history by becoming the first government since the fall of communism in Poland in 1989 to be re-elected.

— ALSO: Sweden’s prime minister is re-elected in 2010 and the prime ministers of Latvia and Estonia are re-elected in 2011.

Urdangarin allegedly received €6 million ($7.9 million) in public money from 2004 to 2006 from regional governments in Mallorca and Valencia for arranging conferences through a nonprofit foundation he ran with a partner, then funneled it to for-profit companies they controlled.

Major Spanish newspapers including El Pais and El Mundo reported Tuesday that Urdangarin and the ex-partner are negotiating to admit guilt, return ill-gotten money, pay a big fine and avert jail.

But Urdangarin’s attorney, Mario Pascual Vives, said Wednesday he himself has not been in contact with prosecutors over any such deal.

“In my capacity as lawyer for Mr. Urdangarin, neither formally nor informally have I been in any kind of contact with prosecutors, nor their honorable representatives in Palma de Mallorca, with regard to any kind of agreement or deal,” the attorney told reporters in Barcelona.

Under the plea deal described in the media reports, Urdangarin would agree to plead guilty on condition prosecutors not seek a jail term of more than two years. The length of any sentence is key because first-time offenders in Spain — Urdangarin has no criminal record — who are convicted of a crime and sentenced to two years or less automatically receive a suspended sentence. So Urdangarin would not go to jail.

Urdangarin and ex-partner Diego Torres — who once taught him at an exclusive MBA program in Barcelona — could face embezzlement charges, which can carry a jail term of three to six years.

El Pais and El Mundo say Torres is seeking a similar arrangement. His lawyer, Manuel Gonzalez Peeters, did not return a call seeking comment.

When Urdangarin testified behind closed doors in February before a judge in Palma, he described himself as a mere figurehead at the nonprofit foundation — called the Noos Institute — and said the foundation’s business dealings were handled by Torres, according to media reports.

The Urdangarin case and its suggestions of royals using their high-profile position to make loads of easy money in a country that is mired in recession and saddled with a jobless rate now near 25 percent has been a howling embarrassment for the Spanish monarchy. Juan Carlos has banished his son-in-law from royal events.

Many in Spain seem to think it’s virtually inevitable that Urdangarin, a tall, suave man who used to be a professional handball player and met the princess at the Atlanta Olympic games in 1996, will be charged.

Things got worse for the beleaguered royal family last month when it emerged that the king went on an elephant-hunting safari in Africa right in the middle of a week when investor confidence in Spain was hitting rock bottom and Argentina nationalized a big Spanish oil company.

The trip became known only because the king fell and broke his hip during it. Back in Madrid, he apologized sheepishly in an unprecedented act of royal contrition.

Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy has already pushed through a series of labor market and financial sector reforms, taken drastic deficit-reduction measures, and warned Spaniards to that things will get worse before they better. The jobless rate is nearly 23 percent and expected to rise.

The Bank of Spain’s figure is a preliminary estimate. The official GDP figure from the National Statistics Institute comes out April 30.

In financial markets, the country remained under pressure on Monday — the yield, or interest rate, of 10-year Spanish bonds rose 4 basis points to 5.97 percent. The Ibex-35 stock index slumped 2.8 percent.

The central bank said domestic demand dropped again, but foreign demand for Spanish goods rose, but at a slower pace than usual. For the first time in seven quarters, GDP compared to the same figure a year ago fell — by 0.5 percent.

Spain is struggling after the collapse in 2008 of a property bubble that had fueled nearly a decade of solid and sometimes robust growth.

It was only in 2010 that it emerged from nearly two years of recession, and now it is back in another one.

Investors are concerned that the government might not be able to resurrect the economy and generate growth and jobs while drawing money out with austerity measures such as health care and education spending cuts and increases in income, property and corporate taxes.

These worries are pushing up Spanish borrowing costs at debt auctions and intensifying fears this will follow Greece, Ireland and Portugal and seek a bailout.

Interest rates for Spanish bonds have risen alarmingly in recent days, with fears mounting that the country could be the next in Europe to need a bailout. Not exactly the right time to go on an exotic holiday that one major newspaper estimated could cost twice a Spanish worker’s average annual wages.

Spain is also struggling with 23 percent unemployment — the highest in the 17-nation eurozone — which soars to nearly 50 percent for young workers. The trip makes the king’s earlier comments about how he can’t sleep at night thinking about the country’s unemployed ring rather hollow.

“Awful. I think what the king did is awful,” said Angelica Diaz, a 70-year-old homemaker pushing a baby stroller in Madrid. “Because of the lack of solidarity with people here who are going hungry. What he did is wrong. He has to show more humanity.”

— A secret trip that even the government did not know about.

This particular trip — it is not clear if taxpayer money was used — only became public when the king stumbled and fell before dawn Friday at his bungalow in Botswana and fractured his right hip, forcing an emergency flight home and hip replacement surgery.

The El Mundo newspaper said the king had not told Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy’s government of his trip abroad until after the accident.

“The prime minister must know at all times where the head of state is,” El Mundo said in an editorial.

— A trip that just adds to royal family gaffes.

Juan Carlos’ family has been in the news lately — for all the wrong reasons. The king’s son-in-law Inaki Urdangarin is a suspect in a corruption case, accused of using his position to embezzle several million euros in public contracts through a not-for-profit foundation he ran.

Over Easter, the king’s 13-year-old grandson shot himself in the foot with a shotgun, even though by law in Spain you must be 14 to handle a gun. The boy’s father could face a fine.

— A trip that even outraged longtime supporters:

The conservative newspaper El Mundo ran a cartoon with two scenes: the king’s crown on the ground and the word “Bang! above it” — the loud report of an elephant gun — then the pachyderm thudding to the ground and smashing the crown to bits.

The paper said the king has done a lot for Spain, especially overseeing its transition to democracy after the death of longtime dictator Gen. Francisco Franco in 1975. But its lead editorial on Sunday read “An irresponsible trip at the worst possible time.”

Juan Carlos should “admit his mistake and learn from what happened,” the paper said, sounding as if it were admonishing a child.

— A trip that blasts a hole in the king’s conservation credentials.

The king is an honorary president of the Spanish branch of the World Wildlife Fund — which could raise questions about why an alleged conservation enthusiast is killing some of the most intelligent animals on the planet.

— A trip that leaves Spain with a fill-in monarch.

With his father now out on medical leave for a least a month, 44-year-old Crown Prince Felipe is filling in. No one of any real import is calling for the king to step aside, but some have taken the very rare step of urging him to apologize.

“It would not be a bad idea,” Patxi Lopez, president of the Basque region, said Monday. “In these hard times, there are things people just do not understand and this is one of them.”

Javier del Rey, a professor of political communications at Complutense University in Madrid, said Spaniards are not pro-monarchy at heart. Rather, they accept the king without a lot of questions largely out of gratitude: he was key to putting down an attempted coup in 1981, just four years into Spain’s fledgling democracy, by army officers nostalgic for Franco’s rule.

His father, widely known as Don Juan, never ruled as king. Juan Carlos’s grandfather, Alfonso XIII, fled the country in 1931 after anti-monarchy parties won a local election. The king was groomed by Franco to become head of state upon the latter’s death, which ended four decades of rightwing rule.

But del Rey said the king could not have shown poorer lack of judgment with his elephant-hunting trip. He does not expect the king to abdicate, although he said it would be the “elegant” thing to do.

He added that Crown Prince Felipe must be livid — both with his father and with his brother-in-law Urdangarin — for making the Spanish royal family look so bad.

“He knows that there are things which are not inherited,” del Rey said. “To some extent, the monarchy is a daily plebiscite, not just an inheritance you are entitled to.”

It is now up to a judge to decide whether to punish the boy’s father. Spain’s Civil Guard police said he could face a fine of up to €6,000 ($7,900).

Widely known in Spanish media as simply Froilan, the boy is the son of Princess Elena, the eldest of King Juan Carlos and Queen Sofia’s three children. His father is an aristocrat and banker named Jaime de Marichalar. The couple were divorced in 2009.

The royal palace said the boy underwent surgery on a toe overnight and will be hospitalized for a few days. Froilan is the eldest of eight royal grandchildren.

It was not the first shooting incident in the royal family’s history.

In 1956, Juan Carlos was handling a gun that accidentally went off and killed his 14-year-old brother. The accident happened in Estoril, Portugal.

The royal family has been the focus of much media attention in recent months on account of a judicial probe into whether the other princess’ husband — Inaki Urdangarin — used his privileged position to secure lucrative deals for a nonprofit foundation he ran, then fraudulently diverted some of the money for personal benefit.

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Ciaran Giles contributed to this report.