"I present to you my cousin Lilibeth." With these words King Juan Carlos referred to Queen Elizabeth II when he was introducing her to the Spanish guests at the dinner with which the first State trip closed on April 23, 1986 of the kings Juan Carlos and Sofía to Great Britain.The petite Isabel II laughed at the grace of whom she also considered a cousin, a treatment with which all the descendants of Queen Victoria call themselves.
The state trip also closed a period of disagreements that, without affecting the closeness of the two royal families, had conditioned it. The shadow of Gibraltar prevented Juan Carlos and Sofía from attending Carlos and Diana's wedding on July 29, 1981, since the couple had decided to start their honeymoon on the Rock and the government of Adolfo Suárez considered it an intolerable offense for Spain. King Juan Carlos had to call his cousin to explain the situation and, according to what he said, years later, both monarchs agreed that, before the family, there were matters of state.
The relationship between the royal houses of England and Spain dates back to the 16th century when Henry VIII married Catherine of Aragon, a marriage alliance that ended badly when the king repudiated her to marry Anne Boleyn. Years later, Felipe II married María Tudor, and three and a half centuries had to pass before Alfonso XIII fell in love with Princess Victoria Eugenia, granddaughter of Queen Victoria.
The descendants of that marriage share ancestors with Elizabeth II and that is why they have always been considered cousins, as they were, by other branches, Philip of Edinburgh, born Prince of Greece, and Queen Sofia, cousins in turn on the other hand. Greek. The kings Juan Carlos and Sofía, in addition, became boyfriends, in 1961, after coinciding in the wedding of the Dukes of Kent.
During the years in which Juan Carlos de Borbón was a prince in waiting, there were many contacts he had with Queen Elizabeth. On some occasion, the now emeritus came to comment that he had learned a lot from his advice and in fact they maintained close contact once King Juan Carlos reached the throne. Furthermore, in the 1970s, King Constantine of Greece, brother of Queen Sofia, settled in London as an exile and protégé of Queen Elizabeth and her husband, who welcomed and sheltered him, an issue that increased the relationship between the two families.
The wedding of Carlos and Diana was going to be the great reunion between the Bourbons Greece and the Windsors while waiting to schedule the state trips of Elizabeth II to Spain and of Juan Carlos I to England, but Gibraltar got in the way and everything was postponed Five years had to pass until, finally, during the government of Felipe González, the state trip of Kings Juan Carlos and Sofía to London was authorized. The complicity between the two royal couples was evident and the familiarity was revealed, more than at the solemn gala dinner that Elizabeth II offered at Buckingham Palace, at the subsequent dinner that Juan Carlos I convened at the embassy headquarters of Spain in London.
Once family and institutional relations were restored, the next step was to invite Carlos and Diana, with their children Guillermo and Enrique, to spend a few days in the summer at Marivent. They were there four times, between 1986 and 1990, and the family photos on the staircase of the summer residence of the Spanish royal family and the rides aboard the 'Fortuna', where by the way the first photos of Lady Di in a bikini, showering at the bow after bathing in Cabrera waters. After her first stay in Marivent, the princes of Wales made an official visit to Spain in which Diana was even serenaded by the prickly pear from the University of Salamanca.
In their last summer in Mallorca, in 1990, the marital disagreements of Carlos and Diana, who arrived after her husband on the island while he took refuge in the house of some English aristocratic friends residing in Mallorca, were already evident.
In response to the state trip of King Juan Carlos and Queen Sofia to England, Elizabeth II and Philip of Edinburgh were in Spain in October 1988. The British monarch was in Madrid, Seville and Barcelona and, as the culmination of the trip to State, King Juan Carlos invited his cousins to Mallorca. The majestic, and somewhat messy 'Britannia' landed in Porto Pi and one of the days, King Juan Carlos and Queen Sofía went to the same pier to look for Isabel II and the Duke of Edimurgo to take them on a tour of the island by car The four, followed by the Security service, went to the Serra de Tramuntana and King Juan Carlos stopped in Valldemossa to eat in a restaurant. It was the first time that Queen Elizabeth II ate in a public establishment. According to King Juan Carlos, her cousin told him: "I have never eaten in a restaurant" and he replied "Well, it was about time".
As Elizabeth II never went to weddings that were not of her children or grandchildren, she was not in Spain at the weddings of the infantas Elena and Cristina, nor in that of Prince Felipe, to which the prince, now, King Charles of England, attended. . King Juan Carlos is not very fond of weddings either, hence it was Queen Sofía and the then princes Felipe and Letizia who attended the link between Guillermo and Catalina in April 2011.
In recent years, Queen Sofía is the one who has maintained the most contact with Queen Elizabeth II, whom she used to visit on the occasions when she traveled privately to London, so it was strange that she did not accompany King Felipe and Queen Letizia in the funeral that was held last March in memory of the Duke of Edinburgh.
The last great moment between the royal families of Spain and Great Britain was the state visit that King Felipe and Queen Letizia made in July 2017. Queen Elizabeth entertained the couple and, above all, looked at the king with the eyes of a proud grandmother Felipe, while the Duke of Edinburgh, who was already 95 years old, attended Queen Letizia with a certain mischief.
This Thursday, Felipe and Letizia, as kings and as relatives, have also mourned the loss of their beloved aunt Lilibeth.
