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spanishroyals · 3 years ago

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The Queen turns 50

by Jesús Rodríguez for El País Semanal

When the battered Airbus 310, registration plate T.22-2 of the Air Force, finally closes its door and begins to roll down the runway of the Nouakchott airport (capital city of the Islamic Republic of Mauritania), invisible under a violent sandstorm that stains the sky, the sigh of relief from the Queen's team is heard on board the plane. It's over. It is June 2. It has been three frenetic days touring one of the least favored territories on the planet. A Spanish Cooperation trip to give visibility to its development projects in this strategic country: hinge between the Maghreb and the Sahel; a containment dam for human trafficking and jihadist terrorism. And also to express the solidarity of Spain in aspects such as education, health, nutrition or equality. For five months, this visit by the Queen has been carefully designed on three sides: La Moncloa (the Government), La Zarzuela (Royal Household) and Foreign Affairs. And nothing has failed.

The police escorts, haggard and covered in dust, take off their bulletproof vests and earpieces. The head of the operation, the commander of the Civil Guard S. R. V., smiles and blurts out: "What, have you sweated?" And he hugs each component, a score of guards including a couple of female agents; one of them, barely 24 years old, has a noticeable limp. The plane takes height. The Queen jumps out of her seat and greets her security detail one by one: they are her inevitable second family. She makes jokes; she practices the Asturian humor, whose accent comes out when she dominates the situation; she speaks loud, clear and fast; she gestures; asks questions; she addresses them by their first name and claps them vigorously. She doesn't miss a single one. She squats down to massage the injured guard's ankle. The guard blushes.

Until landing at the Torrejón air base four hours later, the consort will not sit down for a moment. She doesn't look tired even though she's exhausted. That is the ritual of her office. She walks the aisles of the plane: she chats with her secretary, the hieratic General of Cavalry José Zuleta; with the head of Protocol of the House, the also militar man Curro Zufiaur; with the Communication and Transmissions staff and with S. C., one of the doctors at La Zarzuela, with whom she has a close relationship. And also with the staff of the Secretary of State for International Cooperation, which has organized and accompanied her on this journey, headed by the Secretary of State herself, the veteran socialist expert in matters of equality, Pilar Cancela. She is linked in a hug with Letizia and exclaims: "The Queen is our first aid worker." Later, in private, she confides to the journalist: “I thought she was cold and distant and it turned out that she is professional, normal and even funny. She has studied the issues. This trip is in tune with her social interests, from food security to child labor or sexist violence. We met with her in her office at La Zarzuela and she had conscientiously brooded over our dossier, which was full of post-its. She knows what we come to do and her role is key in making our solidarity projects known to the world. And now we will meet with her to make a critical judgment and see the lessons learned for next year's trip, which is planned to Latin America. The Queen is not an ornament.

In generic jeans, a T-shirt and walking boots, the Queen turns out to be a small, wiry and very thin woman; with small hands, short and clear nails, without rings (not even a wedding ring); her washed face and her hair, dark and streaked with gray, gathered in a ponytail. She's fit, but she doesn't have a bodybuilders arms. She discreetly wears glasses and always has a mint candy on hand. She is telegenic; a theater addict who dominates the stage (like the great politicians, without going any further than her admired Macron couple), but one could pass her in the street in flat espadrilles and a cap and not notice her presence. The face mask has been for her (and her two daughters, Leonor and Sofía) a valuable instrument of anonymity during the pandemic (for example, at Rosalía's last concert in Madrid). Taking walks, going to buy books or to the market are her ways of experimenting a regular life from which she does not want to be left out.

Because Letizia Ortiz Rocasolano, about to turn 50 this September 15, does not officiate as queen 24 hours a day as Felipe does, committed to being a head of state full time. He is constitutionally the first authority of the State. She is not. Everything affects him, from a sports victory to a forest fire. When the family gets tickets to the movies or a concert (something that happens often), there is always the question of whether he will be able to attend or something unexpected will come up. With an added problem: the reprehensible behavior of his father, Juan Carlos de Borbón, has deprived him of the slightest possibility of failure; he lacks the smallest margin of error. Felipe and Letizia can't screw up. They will never be able to contritely whisper: “I am very sorry. I have made a mistake. It will not happen again".

The one obvious slip of Letizia in her almost 19 years in the royal business (after more than 3,000 public events without noticeable mistakes) took place under the gothic nave of the cathedral of Palma de Mallorca on Easter Sunday 2018, with a run-in with her mother-in-law immortalized by cameras. Someone who was there explains: “Queen Letizia's error was to tell Queen Sofía, in a questionable way, that the photos with the girls were to be taken at home, not in the church; that this was neither the time nor the place. And Sofia's, who has a stubborn and nagging character, was not realizing that she is no longer the queen. The Queen is her daughter-in-law. And Sofía insisted until the other one lost her temper”. The protocol flew through the air that day. From The British Times to The New York Times, the international press echoed the incident, which hid something deeper: the relationship between the two has always been difficult. And the support of the emeritus queen towards Letizia, scarce. Sofía is the great-granddaughter of the Kaiser and Letizia is the granddaughter of a taxi driver. Their educations, backgrounds and generations are different. Sofía is a professional of the 20th century. And Letizia, from the XXI. And as such they behave.

Letizia wasn't even born a princess (like her husband and her daughters and her sisters-in-law and her parents-in-law); she lacks constitutional functions (beyond a possible regency if she were to become a widow with a minor Leonor), a statute (which is enjoyed, for example, by the spouse of the French president), an instruction manual and her own team. In fact, she attends a limited number of institutional events, unlike Sofía, who, for example, co-chaired the oath of the government's presidents (Aznar, Zapatero and Rajoy) and their ministers before a Bible and a crucifix that have gone down in history with the current monarchs. Like the tedeum mass after the proclamation or the Easter celebration. This Queen is neither an agnostic nor a believer. She is, like the 1978 Constitution, non-denominational. In fact, the anachronistic "His Majesty the King, may God keep" has disappeared from the Royal House's invitations.

They are small clues that point to a new direction. The couple's determination is to build a more useful and relatable Monarchy. A renovation plan that Felipe began in 2014 by drafting a code of conduct for his House and his Royal Family, and which eight years later made his personal assets public: 2.5 million euros. At the same time he has tried to defend himself from his own lineage. Especially, the so-called in the Royal Household "Abu Dhabi environment", which, for example, on the 16th of April, during the Easter holidays, counterprogrammed with a photograph of the emeritus King with his daughters and grandchildren the same day the current King, Queen and their daughters, visited a Ukrainian refugee center in Madrid. Letizia knelt down to speak to the children as they recounted their dramatic departure from the country. She was one of the images of the day. The other, the one that was sent from Abu Dhabi to a press agency, created an earthquake in social networks, since in the first photograph the legs of one of the children of the Infanta Cristina were not seen, giving rise to question if it had been retouched.

The magnification of the cathedral incident shows that Letizia (willingly or not, that is the great question) provides constant entertainment content to a society eager for icons. Her image and her presence; her outfits and the legends that surround her (distant, tyrannical, unpleasant), are an asset monetized in the television or digital show business. She is always in the spotlight. Should she be more distant or more open? Should she be more modern or more traditional? Should she be more regal or more common? That is the debate. And there are sides. But she is simply the partner of the head of state. She tries to be happy with her work, to be in her place, to help the King, to give visibility to the causes she believes in, to be a transmission belt between those above and those below, to open doors, to connect with the values and feelings of the citizenship. And be useful to organized civil society. What value does that job have? As Lady Di demonstrated hugging a terminally ill AIDS patient or visiting a landmine field in Angola, a royal can also shine a spotlight on the world's inequalities.

But in addition, Letizia has a life. She stands by that. Not everyone agrees that she can be both a queen and a citizen who enjoys private vacations. Those think that the sovereign costume is not made for her. But almost two decades after arriving at La Zarzuela, Letizia does believe it. In her eight years as queen she has become empowered. She knows the business. And she has instinct. She is a contemporary queen looking for balance; respectful of rituals and protocol (something that cost her to assume), but also convinced of the need to fine-tune a wounded institution —questioned by part of Spanish society and subject of political controversy among the political parties—, which Felipe VI intends to turn into "a renewed Monarchy for a new time". The Queen herself believes more in evolution than in revolution. Her future and that of her family depend on it. She gets lost in Madrid with a very discreet security team. Her friends are lifelong friends. Fridays are for the movies (sometimes on her own), and Saturdays, to go out with friends. She shares with her husband and daughters a long early breakfast and, whenever possible, dinners, in which Felipe's stories abound. Her circle are middle-class professionals. And her daughters, already teenagers, have not had nannies, maids or tutors. When they were little, their parents were the ones who got up at night if they cried. If Letizia traveled, her mother, Paloma Rocasolano, a nurse, would lend a hand.

They have tried to be a normal family with a (apparently) co-responsible father. Although the rest of us have never seen them as such. To begin with, because they live in a mansion lost on a 16,000-hectare estate. But for the Queen, fact or fiction, behind closed doors, the Borbón Ortiz are an ordinary family where their daughters have been educated in a strict sense of the value of things and where expensive jeans or premium sneakers do not enter; a home where feminism is evident, there is strict control over screen time (she is obsessive over their impact on young people) and Leonor and Sofía have been inoculated with culture in their veins by a mother who presumes of being a "cultureta". Queen Letizia would rather have a beer with Scorsese or dinner with Woody Allen, a chat with Graça Machel, the Obamas or her beloved Penélope Cruz, a lunch with Angela Merkel (who told her about her Sunday bike rides with Joachim, her husband) or a reflection on abortion with Jill Biden or on nutrition with Brigitte Macron, than skiing on the slopes of fashionable ski resorts, going to regattas, hunts, the front row of Paris or a mid-afternoon drink at the Real Club de la Puerta de Hierro, bastion of the Madrid aristocracy.

The Queen wins in person. She is a professional communicator. She knows that she only has two minutes to win over each interlocutor and influence the idea that is going to be made and transmitted about her. Whether with a CEO or a person with a disability. She is quick and direct. She arrives, takes a look at the situation and acts; trying to be normal, polite, nice. She tries to address everyone by name, which implies a previous process of documentation and memorization.

Her b-side, that of her strong, incisive and non-conformist character, worried about the image she projects and who receives a thick dossier every morning with comments made about her in the media and social networks (which she sometimes reads and sometimes does not), rarely comes out. One of her few biographers, Leonardo Faccio, who published in 2020 "Letizia. The impatient queen" described her between "the paradox and the contradiction". That is, caught between her origins and her choice. The journalist José Antonio Zarzalejos, former director of the Abc newspaper and author of "Felipe VI. A king in adversity", succinctly defines her: "The Queen is a woman with a complex personality and an indomitable temperament."

She walks upright and with her chin up (perhaps more like the classical dancer of her Asturian childhood than with the supposed prosopopeia of royalty), determined, despite suffering continuous pain in one foot due to chronic metatarsalgia, the result of excessive use of high-heeled shoes, which she hates. In her team they say that she is critical by default and is not satisfied with mediocrity or half measures; that you can't lie to her or keep information from her because she immediately catches you; that she looks for alternatives and new paths; that she is not a doll that officials carry on a litter to hundreds of public events without meaning or content. She gives her opinion. She jumps the chain of command and pesters people. Her style is that of solidarity, not fundriser booths or photo opportunities. She would like to go further, to the Marconi industrial park, on the outskirts of Madrid, to try to rescue the women forced into prostitution in that suburban territory of sexual exploitation; or travel to troubled states such as Mali, Niger or Burkina Faso to give visibility to Spanish cooperation. She would have been even harsher in the legislative and family reproach of the emeritus king (with some investigations in the Supreme Court closed because the immunity while he was head of state shielded him from any accusation and a case opened in London by his ex-lover Corinna Larsen). Common sense and the system prevent her from doing those things. Sometimes she has to settle for the Post Office issuing a stamp with her profile for her 50th birthday. But she does not give up.

They say that one morning, in the Carrefour's greengrocer near her home, her neighbor in the queue looked at her sideways and blurted out: "And what are you doing here?" To which the Queen replied sarcastically: "Well, same as you, buying tomatoes." Letizia does not back down. She answers back. To the Royal Household team and to their fish supplier, from whom she demands fatter sardines because they are in season. But she is aware that being a woman is a disadvantage in a society where the press gives more attention to whether she repeats her dress, the length of her skirt or her tan than to her status as ambassador of the FAO for Nutrition or as UNICEF Mental Health Advocate for Children and Adolescents (she will speak soon on the subject at the United Nations headquarters in New York). Something that bothers her deeply. But for the media, for any mobile recording device, the target is her. No matter what she does. A close source says: “she is aware that women are judged by their appearance much more than men. And that pisses her off. She has, for example, a great relationship with Begoña Gómez, the wife of President Sánchez, who is from her generation and a valuable professional. They could do a lot of interesting things together, but they would start comparing them. Disagreements would be invented. For this reason, it is better that they are not seen hand in hand, because they would become the target of rumours, like when President Biden visited Spain".

Around Letizia, form always prevails over substance. In June, during the Madrid Retiro Book Fair, the Queen went hoarse recommending a large group of ladies to read; they, meanwhile, advised her to dye her gray hair because it made her look older. "Get some highlights, beautiful," said one. "Yes, ma'am, but you read," the consort concluded.

She does not grant interviews, but she would be a bad interviewee: she asks more questions than she answers. She looks straight ahead with her green eyes and shoots. She is hyperactive, inquisitive, curious, even harsh in her judgments. A member of her team assures me: "She is for real." She landed for love almost 19 years ago in the heart of one of the oldest monarchies in the world. Perhaps she was not aware of what she was getting herself into. She thought she could handle anything. A bookworm and a nerd, precocious and know-it-all; daughter of divorced parents, college graduate and independent; hardly meek; civilly married at the age of 25 to her former high school teacher; divorcee; ambitious, professionally successful, perhaps her high self-esteem betrayed her. Or maybe love kept her from seeing reality. She walked into the lion's den. Her entrance to royalty in 2004 gave her such a shock that it took her a decade to recover.

She entered a dysfunctional family where she was never in tune with the other members. First, with Juan Carlos de Borbón (who repeatedly belittled the couple), and then with the infantas Elena and Cristina. And even less with the latter's husband, Iñaki Urdangarin —who one day blurted out in public to Letizia: “You, what do you have to complain about”—, and to whose Barcelona mansion the Borbón Ortiz couple decided not to return after seeing the flashiness of the property.

Letizia has never really connected with Madrid's plutocracy, although one of her slips came precisely because of a text she sent to a prominent member of that ruling class, Javier López Madrid, an old friend of her husband and implicated in the court case summaries of Caja Madrid's opaque cards, the attack on Dr. Elisa Pinto or the Punic Operation, and whom she affectionately called "yogi friend" in a private text that was leaked. But long before that she had already been labelled as the person who was going to destroy the Monarchy by herself (something like Camilla Parker Bowles, who is today one of the great assets of the British Monarchy). In the end, those who have been close to bringing down the Crown have been others with a royal surname.

Her almost two decades of life in La Zarzuela could be titled like Pedro Sánchez's biography: "Manual of endurance". She reached the physical and emotional limit after much loneliness and bitterness, two bad pregnancies with cesarean sections included and, above all, when Erika, her little sister, took her own life in 2007. Without forgetting the book written by her first cousin David Rocasolano, "Goodbye , princess" which she considered a betrayal for money, and which entered into very private chapters of her past life, such as an alleged pregnancy termination. Only her discipline has carried her forward. She has managed to adapt and survive. And, above all, accept the consequences of her choice. Today she is rigorous and strict in her physical exercise, diet and mental health regime. And she works hard so that other people's opinions do not weigh as much on her state of mind. She has gained in flexibility (of character). Although to win an arm wrestling match against her you still have to break her arm.

The instruction in the Household of His Majesty the King when Letizia Ortiz arrived at Monte del Pardo in 2004 was, according to one former official, "to bridle her". Or, as they prefer to say now in La Zarzuela with courtly language: “To carry out a process of adaptation to the House”. Which translated into keeping her quiet for three years, without an agenda, without office space or staff; without attending events on her own, a passive companion of the then Prince of Asturias and without overshadowing Queen Sofía, who filled every gap, from the fight against drug addiction to the pandas at the Madrid Zoo. She spent those summers in Mallorca withering in Marivent, with her little daughters, between her mother-in-law and the exquisite Jaime de Marichalar, while the rest of the family sailed.

In 2007, after hitting rock bottom, the Household finally decided to provide her with an agenda and assign her a secretary. The post fell to José Zuleta, Duke of Abrantes, a civil servant who has spent his entire career at La Zarzuela. No one asked Letizia for her opinion. What at first seemed a risky choice, has been a good team for 15 years. Especially because Zuleta is a tough guy who doesn't tolerate nonsense and perfectly acts as the Queen's introducer and shield. From that moment on, it was necessary to make sense of an agenda as pompous in its name as it was empty of content. This meant reaching an agreement with the Government (through the General Secretariat of the Presidency), not bothering Doña Sofía (nor the infantas, who continued under the umbrella of La Zarzuela) and managing that Letizia's interests coincided with those of the Household. In short, that they were harmless. Letizia chose to focus on two nebulous issues that she had worked on as an editor for Televisión Española: health and education. In these years, 77% of her activities have gone in that direction. Doña Sofía had not said a word in 40 years of official events (her first language is English), so, accordingly, Letizia's speeches would be few, brief and supervised by the Household. At most, three minutes. Today she writes all her public words, but the review of La Zarzuela (and in certain cases of La Moncloa) is unavoidable. Those of the King are always endorsed by the Presidency of the Government.

She had to earn the crown every day. Where to start? According to sources from La Zarzuela, “her first activities were in the fight against cancer, but she didn't stop at the ceremonial aspect, which would be an affront to her, and she became involved in cancer research. And then, the rhythm itself starting contributing new activities. There is a word-of-mouth effect, because her presence generates an interest in those social sectors”. That happened in 2008, when she brought the ignored rare diseases and the sidelined professional training into relevance. Her range of interests would expand with issues such as disability, sexist violence, sexual exploitation of women (she works actively with APRAMP, the Association for the Prevention, Reintegration and Care of Prostituted Women) and, above all, nutrition, which she has studied with the zeal of a student preparing the hardest exam you can think of (there is no possible translation from the original Spanish). Today, she can talk non-stop about molecular biology and metabolic pathologies, the neurotoxicity of alcohol, childhood obesity, diabetes, hypertension or dysbiosis. At the first opportunity, she asks her interlocutor what they eat.

On June 19, 2014, the same day that Felipe VI was proclaimed King, Sofía de Grecia collected her things from her office in La Zarzuela, decorated in shades of green and full of memories, and closed the door. Letizia took her time before moving into it, removed the carpet and the fabrics, and had it painted white. And she began to leave her mark. Today, after 10 years as Princess of Asturias and eight as Queen consort, she is, with all her contradictions, a professional of the Monarchy. She is satisfied with her work. For which she gets paid 142,402 euros per year. And she finds fulfilment in it. She has even reconciled with fashion after hiring stylist Eva Fernández in 2015, who has given her assurance and the opportunity to send signs with her clothes: from garments from Spanish brands, some sustainable or reclaiming artisan and traditional ways, to showing support to Ukraine or La Palma, to recognition to the Adlib style, or a collection made by women rescued from prostitution.

Now, her concern is the education and future of her daughters. It was Leonor, the heiress to the Crown, the one who decided to spend two years at the UWC Atlantic College, in Wales; two years of freedom prior to her entering the three military academies (beginning in the fall of 2023 and ending on the training ship Juan Sebastián de Elcano) and university studies, with Law as the backbone. Leonor and Sofía have lived their unique position since they were children with apparent naturalness. “For Leonor it wasn't like pulling Excalibur out of a rock and suddenly becoming a princess; Her parents didn't summon her one day to tell her out of the blue that she was going to be queen. Everything has been easier. They are normal girls, ”says a person close to them. Despite this some in the media have accused Letizia of separating them from the lives of young girls their age and having them cloistered.

It is surprising that a person as visceral as Letizia manages to contain her feelings so much. She has rarely gone off script. Perhaps the most palpable moment was when she returned to her College of Information Sciences on September 14, 2021. There she was just Ortiz. Smart, funny, intense; imitating teachers' voices, reminiscing and reverting to that 18-year-old girl who wanted to be a journalist. At the end of the event, she put her hands to her heart and nailed it: "Fifty years is a nice number to keep trying to do things well in the place where each one belongs."

#spanish royal family #queen letizia #queen letizia at 50 (1972-2022)#text #long post #El País as usual writing the worthwhile stuff #Pity they didn't focus on the avalanche of bad press #aided and abetted by old Zarzuela #that wrapped her reputation and turned her into a different person in public #Letizia shouting into the void please read while the public yells dye your hair #could be any royal forum too

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