King Juan Carlos and Queen Sofia have returned to Jordan, the country where they spent part of their honeymoon in 1962, invited by King Hussein. This Thursday they attend the wedding of the late Hashemite monarch's grandson with the Saudi architect Rawja Al Saif in Amman, where they will share the celebration with representatives of other royal houses.
This Thursday will be the third time, after the funerals of Isabel II and Constantine of Greece, in which Juan Carlos and Sofía appear together since the King's father went into self-exile in the summer of 2020. Queen Sofía has traveled to Jordan from Madrid and King Juan Carlos has done it from Abu Dhabi.
The traditional friendship between the Jordanian and Spanish royal families was cemented in the reigns of Hussein I and Juan Carlos I, but it was born years before, when the Hashemite monarch played host to the then princes Juan Carlos and Sofía visited Jordan in the month of May 1962, after their wedding in Athens. Hussein accompanied them on his visit to Jerusalem, a city that in 1962 belonged to Jordan. Years later, in 1975, Hussein was in Madrid at the proclamation of Juan Carlos I and for years, in addition to making state visits, they maintained close contact. Juan Carlos and Hussein were treated as brothers and the Spanish monarch always supported the Hashemite in his multiple attempts to reach peace agreements in the Middle East. In 1995, King Hussein received the Prince of Asturias Award for Concord in Oviedo for his peacemaking work.
Years before, in 1989, King Hussein gave King Juan Carlos La Mareta, the house that had been built in Lanzarote and that the King's father ceded to Heritage to be used by the Spanish authorities and foreign visitors as a resting place. The Countess of Barcelona, mother of King Juan Carlos, died in that residence on January 2, 2000, after having spent the last days of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st with the rest of the royal family.
After King Hussein's death in 1999, King Juan Carlos supported King Abdullah at the beginning of his reign, reiterating Spain's support and his own in Jordan's role as a stabilizing country in the troubled Middle East area.
The friendship between the two families continued with the close relationship between Queen Sofía and Nur, widow of King Hussein, whom Marivent repeatedly invited. The princes of Asturias also made part of their honeymoon in Jordan, after attending, on May 28, 2004, the wedding of the then prince Hamzah, (son of Hussein and Nur) whom his father appointed heir to his other son Abdallah, who would succeed him on the throne. King Abdallah ended up removing Hamzah as heir and named his eldest son, Hussein, who today stars in the great Jordanian wedding.
