The day that Letizia Ortiz woke up as a princess and went to bed as a queen was the calmest of all those she has lived since her marriage commitment to Felipe de Borbón was announced on November 1, 2003. That June 19, 2014, the day of the proclamation of Felipe VI, the intense, perfectionist woman, as nice almost always as she is dry when she wants to, as solemn at times as impetuous at times, knew how to remain calm and offer the image of her future as queen: a serene woman, aware of her role and willing to be an anchor and watchdog for her husband and daughters.
Letizia Ortiz Rocasolano, queen consort of Spain, turns 50 on September 15. A month ago, while walking with the King and his daughters, the gardens of the Cartoixa de Valldemossa, in Mallorca, she replied with “we all have an age” when someone from her environment made a comment about the passage of the years. It was his only reaction, so far, and although no special celebration is scheduled, it seems that his agenda for the next 15 days is designed so that, taking advantage of the event, the day-to-day work of the Queen.
This Tuesday, after her vacation, the Queen joins the official agenda with her attendance at an event organized in Lleida by the Spanish Association Against Cancer. From the first moment, the fight against cancer and against the so-called rare diseases, as well as food health, the promotion of reading and since she is queen, international cooperation, have been the causes that Letizia has sponsored. Although she could have limited herself to putting the focus with her simple presence, the heads of the various organizations and associations with which she collaborates continue to be surprised by the intensity of her involvement. Queen Letizia likes to make it clear that, although she is aware that she is who she is based on her marriage and not for herself, she never planned to act as an ornament.
Almost 19 years have passed and the phrase with which Letizia cut off the then Prince (although in reality he interrupted her) on the day of her official presentation is still being repeated. Her “let me finish her” continues to haunt her as a blot on her record, when in fact it should be considered her first statement of principles. We did not know then that Felipe de Borbón had made the most important decision of his life based precisely on the determined character of Letizia Ortiz. He, who had had affairs with other women, found in the intrepid journalist his companion not only for the exercise of his real functions, but also the person with whom (and surely he already sensed it) he was going to have to share some troubled times for the Crown.
Letizia Ortiz arrived at the Zarzuela when the autumn of King Juan Carlos was beginning. Although the Prince’s wedding was a milestone in the popularity of the royal family, the truth is that the best times were not lived at that time. King Juan Carlos, who never hid his lack of harmony with Letizia, had started a relationship with Corinna Larsen that focused all her interests. Those were times when Iñaki Urdangarin’s business drift threatened, as it did, with blowing up the prestige of the Crown and, at the same time, the physical problems of King Juan Carlos evidenced his own decadence.
Princess Letizia, so willing she, was shrinking. Her first pregnancy, which like the second was difficult, locked her in her world. She wanted to bring freshness and novelty to the Crown, but she went from wanting to change the institution to resisting the institution changing her. The birth of Princess Leonor, on October 31, 2005, gave her a little air, but her bad relationship with King Juan Carlos and her lack of understanding with her sisters-in-law Elena and Cristina, added to the lack of connection with the queen Sofía made him take refuge in his usual friendships and customs, which gave rise to the version of a crazy life. The tragic death of her sister Erika de Ella, who took her own life in February 2007, was a blow but, two months later, on April 30, Sofia was born and, again, she was animated. The procession went inside, because the drift of King Juan Carlos, in part caused by the appearance of the Nóos case, made the atmosphere of the Zarzuela unbreathable.
Letizia complied as princess but, according to people who lived through that time inside the Zarzuela, she kept a pulse with her husband, whom she reproached for not defending her before the then King, nor publicly distancing herself from the still dukes of Palma. Perhaps due to maintaining contact with the outside world, Letizia, who did not hide her discomfort away from home, was clear that this situation was not only taking its toll on the image of King Juan Carlos, it was, and that was the worst, damaging the future of the Prince and, therefore, that of his daughters.
The last years of the reign of Juan Carlos I were hard inside and outside the Zarzuela. Princess Letizia could not hide her discomfort when she had to appear with her father-in-law and, until 2009 they disappeared from the official map, she also with her brothers-in-law Iñaki and Cristina. It was a time in which she tried to protect her family nucleus, made up of her husband and her daughters, and in which the only, until now, moment of marital crisis occurred when in the summer of 2013, Felipe de Borbón, was before Prince heir than husband and, still not having her, he agreed with his father, King Juan Carlos in a matter related to Letizia’s public functions. Calm man and enemy of the conflict, Felipe de Borbón knew how to weather the storm and Letizia abandoned her desire for rebellion and change. She knew how to wait for her moment and her moment arrived, after agonizing months, on June 2, 2014 when King Juan Carlos announced his abdication.
On June 19, Letizia got up princess and went to bed queen but, and that’s good, she did not seek revenge, nor was it recognized that she was right about so many things. No, her goal from that day on was to build an image of service to the Crown, in which her role was to reinforce the motto announced by Felipe VI in his proclamation speech: “A renewed monarchy for a new time ”.
Letizia is not a fairytale queen, she has nothing in common with her predecessor, not even with her contemporaries from other kingdoms. She is not afraid of her work, but she considers herself more of a high-ranking official of the State than an elected one; in her marriage she is the strong one, the singing voice that sometimes goes out of tune, but in public functions she is impeccable. Queen Letizia likes critics of the monarchical institution more than her devotees, she is a woman of deep civic convictions, as demanding with herself as with others; she contradictory to the point of taking care of her physical appearance to the limit; to regret that, in certain acts, there is more talk about her clothes than about what she has gone to do and, nevertheless, spending hours deciding on her wardrobe. Radical and free, she sometimes seems to go off the rails, but she never loses sight of the fact that her goal is to maintain the prestige of the Crown by adapting it to the times, so that her daughter Leonor can reign.
