Prince Felipe of Asturias Gets Married
Seven years before Prince William married Kate Middleton, another photogenic bride of modest breeding created the model of the very modern princess. It was the spring of 2004, and Letizia Ortiz Rocasolano was on the arm of the dashing Prince Felipe of Asturias, a member of the 750-year-old Bourbon dynasty and heir to the throne of Spain.
By marrying Letizia, Felipe was putting to bed years of gossip and speculation. The tanned former Olympic yachtsman, who was 36, had been linked to a string of head-turners, including a Norwegian model, a Liechtensteiner princess, and American model turned socialite Gigi Howard. Like Kate Middleton, Letizia, then 31, was notable for being a “commoner,” the middle-class daughter of a journalist and a nurse. Unlike Kate, she was also divorced and established in her profession; as a Spanish TV news anchor, she had reported from Ground Zero after 9/11. She and Felipe hit it off the following year, after, rumor has it, Felipe arranged for a mutual friend to invite them both to dinner.
Despite pearl-clutching in the more conservative corners of Spanish society, the wedding, at the Almudena Cathedral in Madrid, would set the tone for a relationship defined by poise and quiet professionalism. Such qualities, along with Letizia’s cover star smile and style, cemented the comparisons with the Duchess of Cambridge. They also became vital when, in 2014, a royal scandal propelled Felipe, now 56, to the throne far sooner than he could have dreamed.
If any royal couple had the chops to rescue the Spanish monarchy from the mire left by the disgraced King Juan Carlos, whose sins included affairs, allegations of corruption (an investigation was subsequently shelved), and a very poorly timed luxury elephant-hunting safari, it was Felipe, in his sober suits, with the elegant Letizia, now 51, by his side.
Concerns around the Zarzuela Palace
But today, 20 years after those glittering nuptials—and 10 years after Felipe vowed to restore the monarchy’s reputation following his father’s abdication—concerns are swirling like crows around the Zarzuela Palace. They involve a nonagenarian journalist, warring dynasties, an impudent prime minister, and outlandish claims of royal infidelity by Letizia’s own former brother-in-law.
The wives of Spanish kings have faced various degrees of scrutiny, some of it extreme. “Queen consorts have always provoked curiosity, and curiosity is the mother of controversy,” says José Antonio Zarzalejos, the author of Felipe VI: Un Rey en la Adversidad (A King in Adversity), who had meetings with his subject while researching the book.
Letizia certainly would have been anxious to avoid the fate of her mother-in-law. Queen Sofia stood by as Juan Carlos, now 86, conducted affairs. Most notable among his lovers was Corinna zu Sayn-Wittgenstein-Sayn, a Danish businesswoman with whom he went elephant hunting in Africa in 2012, as Spain languished in a deep recession. The affair tipped popular opinion against a king who had been internationally acclaimed for steering Spain from dictatorship to democracy in the 1970s. He abdicated after almost 40 years in power and later spent a period of self-imposed exile in the United Arab Emirates. Felipe slimmed down the monarchy when he took the throne and positioned himself and Letizia as the antidote to scandal.
This came with a personal cost. “The scandal broke the family, and Felipe had to choose between the father and the institution of the monarchy. He chose the monarchy,” says David Jiménez, an author and the former editor-in-chief of El Mundo.
It all makes the new claims seem incendiary, not least because the queen herself is in the spotlight. At the center of the alleged scandal is Jaime del Burgo, the controversial son of a politician and, perhaps notably, grandson of Jaime del Burgo Torres, a prominent activist in the Carlist movement, which formed in the 19th century to fight for the claim to the Spanish throne of an alternative branch of the Bourbon dynasty.
In November last year Jaime Peñafiel, a 92-year-old newspaper columnist who is known for his fealty to Juan Carlos, published Letizia y Yo (Letizia and I). In the book del Burgo, a 54-year-old entrepreneur based in London, tells Peñafiel that he and Letizia had struck up a romance in the 1990s on a trip to Venice. He says he was preparing to propose to her when she told him that she was dating a mysterious “diplomat” and that her new relationship would end her career. According to the book, del Burgo deduced that his rival was Felipe.
Del Burgo went further, claiming that the romance continued in the shadows. He alleged that he had met Letizia on the eve of the royal wedding. “She took hold of my hand and asked me why I had never asked her to marry me. Obviously, I didn’t reply. I encouraged her as best I could. The last thing she said to me before we said goodbye to each other in that restaurant was a request: ‘Never leave me.’ ”
The relationship did continue, del Burgo alleged, even telling Peñafiel that there were plans to flee Spain together for the U.S. He said he had photos and text messages that support his story, but he has so far shared nothing to substantiate it. Meanwhile the Casa Real, the royal palace, has declined to comment on the issue.
Weeks after the book’s publication, del Burgo posted on X (formerly Twitter) an old photo of Letizia that the princess had apparently taken of herself in a bathroom mirror. Del Burgo claimed that the black pashmina she wore was his. He tweeted a message that he alleged Letizia had sent him with the selfie: “Love. I’m wearing your pashmina. It’s like feeling you next to me. It takes care of me. Protects me. I count the hours until we see each other again. Love you. Get out of here. Yours.” The post has since been deleted, and at this point there is no proof that Letizia sent the photo and accompanying text.
Del Burgo says in the book that Letizia ended the romance in 2011. In a turn of events that would be startling in any family, he then married her sister, Telma Ortiz, the following year. The couple moved to New York, but Telma, an economist, returned to Spain months later, and they separated after two years, in 2014. (In a remarkable subplot, Telma then married Gavin Bonnar, an Irish lawyer who had been married to Sharon Corr, of the Irish band the Corrs. In 2021 Corr released an autobiographical album. Its title track, “The Fool & the Scorpion,” includes the lyrics “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned” and “The queen’s twisted sister, a chameleon.”)
Then, in July of this year, del Burgo gave an interview to Clarín, an Argentinian magazine, in which he repeated his claims of an ongoing romantic relationship and said he had last spoken to Letizia in May of this year. “As I have always said, ours was not a relationship of lovers,” he said. “The lover would be him, in any case. I mean Felipe.”
The outburst made headlines in the UK, including in the Times of London, but there was a more muted response in Spain, as well as a backlash against del Burgo. Esther López Barceló, a left-wing academic and former politician, said that even republicans sympathized with the queen regarding these intimate allegations. “Letizia could be my class enemy and, at the same time, the victim of a crime against privacy that is based on the patriarchy,” she posted online.
Even the celebrity press mostly ignored the contretemps. A senior editor at ¡Hola! told me, “We do not wish to comment on this subject”. Zarzalejos won’t go there either, and several experts on Spanish constitutional affairs swerve around any appeals for insight.
Del Burgo, who initially agreed to answer Town & Country’s questions via email before going silent, deleted his X account earlier this year, although he later reemerged on the site and reposted the mirror selfie, along with a promise to release a TV documentary called And Nothing More Than the Truth. Meanwhile Peñafiel was let go by El Mundo, where he was a columnist.
One key question for del Burgo concerns his motives. There were hints that he was driven by more than matters of the heart. He expressed his dislike of the monarchy itself, which he called “rotten.” He tweeted last December, “I recognize only one king in heaven, and his name is Jesus of Nazareth. He will judge me.” In fact, del Burgo was quite chatty on X in December, when he also retweeted a far-right conspiracy theory that held that Juan Carlos’s abdication was not part of a crown rescue mission by Felipe but a leftist plot to usher in a new king who, with Letizia by his side and a renewed moral mission to uphold democracy, would have no choice but to tolerate a socialist prime minister.
You don’t have to be a scorned lover, leftist plotter, or conspiracy theorist to identify the gravest threat to the monarchy, which has given way to republics twice in Spain’s modern history. “The biggest challenge to the royal family and to the crown is undoubtedly the government,” says Ramón Pérez-Maura, a Spanish journalist who grew up in a political family.
It’s not hard to see why conservatives have taken against Pedro Sánchez, the current prime minister, and Felipe’s support of him. Sánchez, who came to power in 2018, narrowly secured a second term last year (after failing to win a majority) by controversially relying on the support of a left-wing alliance that included radicals and Catalan separatists, for whom Spain’s monarchy has been a barrier to independence. This seemed to only embolden Sánchez’s republican instincts.
Pérez-Maura tells me Sánchez has repeatedly skipped the traditional weekly meeting with the king, and that the prime minister had to be pulled away when he broke protocol by standing alongside Felipe and Letizia to greet people at an official reception at the palace on Spain’s National Day. “It was absolutely incredible,” Pérez-Maura says. “He just doesn’t play by the rules… King Felipe is managing to remain on top, but with a very hostile relationship with a man who can’t stand the fact that he’s not the head of state.”
Zarzalejos says that Sánchez has also declined to dispatch a minister to accompany the king on official trips abroad. “That is not tolerable,” the writer says. Yet publicly, at least, Felipe has displayed extreme tolerance, quietly rising above the political fray while continuing to draw a line between his and his father’s reigns.
The stakes are high for Felipe, who was born a year before Franco, Spain’s fascist dictator, chose his father to be the next king. Juan Carlos’s humiliating abdication only reinforced the sense of precariousness in Spain’s monarchy—and an uncertain fate for its royal family.
In the Argentinian interview, del Burgo said he could not see the monarchy surviving beyond 2027, the year of the next general election. Republicanism has been a persistent force in Spain, and in June thousands protested in Madrid. Some threw an effigy of Felipe on a republican flag as the crowd chanted, “Los Borbones a los tiburones!”: throw the Bourbons to the sharks.
But, despite a degree of discontent, and the best efforts of del Burgo, nobody I spoke to shares such a pessimistic outlook. Official approval ratings for the royals are no longer published in Spain, but Zarzalejos tells me he has seen positive private polling.
Pérez-Maura believes that Letizia, meanwhile, continues to be a vital asset. Yet even if she can brush off del Burgo’s claims, she may not be the queen who determines the longevity of the Spanish monarchy. A difficult year for the royal couple has coincided with the coming of age of Leonor, their elder daughter, 18 and heir to the throne. She was featured prominently in a summer exhibition of photographs held at the palace to mark a decade of Felipe’s reign, and she has commenced public engagements while also enrolling at the prestigious Zaragoza Military Academy.
“She wasn’t shown publicly more than once a year, but since she has come out in the last year and a half, she is very pretty and has captured the nation’s attention,” Pérez-Maura says. “She is the biggest asset the family has right now.”
Given the nature of del Burgo’s kiss-and-tell claims, and the response of feminists in particular, it’s striking that Leonor might be the savior for a royal family with a history of problematic relationships with women, in a country that has not had a reigning queen since Isabella II was deposed in 1868. “This is the century of women, and Leonor will surely coincide on the throne with other queens in Europe,” Zarzalejos says. “It will be a great opportunity to create a different view of our country.”