Barely a week after our Mary became the future Queen of Denmark, Spain celebrated its own royal wedding amid much pomp and ceremony. Like Denmark’s king-in-waiting, the next Spanish monarch, Felipe, married a commoner. In a further departure from royal tradition, the new princess had been married before. The marriage of the prince to Letizia Ortiz, formerly a reporter in Iraq and co-presenter of TV Espana’s nightly news program, caught the nation by surprise after a secret courtship.
As if that weren’t sufficient intrigue, Felipe had once before been denied permission to marry the woman of his choice. Back in 1989, Felipe began to date Isabel Satorius, a woman of aristocratic blood whose mother had been twice-divorced. Traditionalists pointed to the Spanish royal family’s historical requirement (more a convention than a written rule, originating in the 18th century) that any future monarch must renounce his right to the throne should he choose to marry a commoner. More importantly at the time, reports circulated that Felipe’s parents, King Juan Carlos I and Queen Sofía, disapproved of the union although their reasons were never made public nor was their opposition officially confirmed. The most informed speculation suggested that Isabel’s divorced mother was the stumbling block. Whatever the reasons, the relationship floundered on the impossibility of its continuation in 1993.
This time around, palace sources suggested that Felipe issued his parents with an ultimatum: let him marry Letizia or he would renounce the throne of Spain.
Even now with the union granted royal blessing and having passed without notable dissent, the couple retain the power to capture the public’s attention. This is partly because after its surprise election in March, the government of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero announced a major departure from traditional royal practice: the first-born child of Felipe and Letizia will be considered the heir to the throne, irrespective of gender.
Aside from such arcane arguments of succession and the right of a future king to choose his partner, there is a serious side to the issue of the monarchy in Spain. Polls consistently show that up to 80 per cent of the Spanish population consider the monarchy to be an anachronism. And yet, among the many Spaniards who consider themselves nominally republican, most don’t pursue anything beyond vague expressions of opinion. An often heard refrain describing the royal family is that ‘they don’t bother anyone’. That’s a lot easier to say in Spain