The racy past of TV girl who became a royal
AS a middle-class girl who married a prince and became a royal style icon, Queen Letizia of Spain has more than just looks in common with the Duchess of Cambridge.
But for all their apparent similarities – be it their slim build, dark hair and fondness for sleek tailoring, or their ‘commoner’ background – the 44 year old Spaniard has a far more colourful past than Kate.
A divorced former television journalist, Letizia’s background includes family tragedy, controversy over plastic surgery, an allegation that she had an abortion after falling pregnant by her first husband a year before she met King Felipe, and even claims that she was seen as a threat to the future of the Spanish monarchy by Juan Carlos, her future father-in-law.
The eldest daughter of Jesus Alvarez, a journalist, and his first wife Maria Rodriguez, a nurse, Letizia was born in Oviedo, northern Spain.
One sister, Telma, became an economist; the other, Erika, committed suicide by taking an overdose while suffering from depression.
Letizia went to school in Madrid, then got a degree in journalism and a masters in audiovisual journalism, before working for newspapers and the Spanish network TVE.
As a news anchor, she reported live from Ground Zero following the 9/11 attacks in 2001. She met Prince Felipe the following year – at the site of an oil spillage in Northern Spain.
Her first husband Alonso Guerrero Pérez, a writer and literature teacher, was nine years her senior. They dated for ten years before marrying in 1998, but divorced just a year later.
In a book written by her cousin, it was later alleged that Letizia had an abortion after falling pregnant by her first husband a year before she met Felipe. The veracity of that claim is not known.
But the year after first meeting Felipe, Letizia quit her job and a few days later their engagement was announced.
Their marriage in Madrid in 2004 prompted an upswing in support for the royal family, and her habit of championing High Street brands such as Zara proved popular. She and Felipe had two daughters, Leonor in 2005 and Sofia in 2007.
But as time wore on she was criticised for being unsmiling on official engagements. Then there was further controversy when she had surgery on her nose in 2008.
The official explanation was that she had a deviated septum which had to be fixed. But commentators were quick to point her post-operation nose looked a little daintier too.
Another book, The Court of Felipe VI published in 2015, alleged Juan Carlos ‘never liked the arrival of a journalist in a place that had traditionally been an opaque haven from the fourth estate’.
He would also allegedly joke among his friends that Letizia was the ‘worst thing that happened to [the royal household] in many years’ – and his aristocratic friends apparently referred to Letizia as ‘la chacha’, meaning ‘the maid’.
But polls have shown that King Felipe’s ‘common touch’ has increased the popularity of the Spanish royal family. And while it was also claimed in The Court of Felipe VI that Queen Letizia can display a lack of diplomacy with employees, the book acknowledged that she has helped Spaniards to identify with the monarchy.
The common touch