El choque de las reinas españolas

¿Adivinas cuál es la sexta noticia más leída en la edición de hoy de The New York Times?

¿Adivinas cuál es la sexta noticia más leída en la edición de hoy de The New York Times?
La Reina Letizia y la Reina Sofía en 'The New York Times'. EP

Considerado como uno de los periódicos más influyentes del planeta, The New York Times recoge el rifirrafe real y titula Queen Sofía and Queen Letizia Face Off, and Spain Is Aghast’.

Algo así como ‘La Reina Letizia y la Reina Sofía se enfrentan ante el alucine de España’.

La traducción más libre y moderna sería: España lo flipa con el enfrentamiento de las reinas (El rapapolvo del rey Felipe a Letizia tras su desplante en la catedral de Palma).

Lost in translation aparte, que el rotativo se haya hecho eco del vídeo que ha conmocionado la percepción de la monarquía en España no es extraño (Leyendo los labios de Sofía y Letizia: «Déjalo, por favor»).

Pero es que la noticia ocupa el sexto lugar entre las más leídas de su web.

«La mayor parte de las familias reales son opacas, con apariciones públicas cuidadosamente coreografiadas que enmascaran cualquier indicio de discordia familiar. Pero la familia real española ha saltado a los titulares esta semana después de que un vídeo poco habitual viese la luz el martes dejando ver un encontronazo el Domingo de Resurrección entre la reina Sofía y su nuera, la reina Letizia».

Queen Sofía and Queen Letizia Face Off, and Spain Is Aghast

  • LONDON — Most royal families are opaque, their public appearances carefully choreographed, any hint of family discord masked.
  • But the Spanish royal family made headlines this week after unusual footage emerged on Tuesday of an encounter between Queen Sofía and her daughter-in-law, Queen Letizia, on Easter Sunday.
  • Local news outlets speculated that a simmering royal argument had spilled — embarrassingly — into the open after a Mass at Palma Cathedral in Mallorca.
  • The footage spread quickly on social media, with the Spanish newspaper El País calling the scene “tense” and the Diario de Mallorca describing it as “uncomfortable.”
  • Few outside the family seem to know exactly what was behind the encounter.
  • Nonetheless, what the cameras showed looked awkward, at best.
  • Queen Sofía, 79, puts her arms around her granddaughters, Princesses Leonor and Sofía, and gathers them close, apparently to have a photograph taken.
  • Queen Letizia, 45, the girls’ mother and the wife of King Felipe VI, then moves in front of the three, stepping this way and that — movements interpreted by news outlets as trying to block the photograph. Queen Sofía reacts by shuffling back and forth and clutching the girls ever more tightly.
  • Letizia reaches out to brush the hair of Princess Leonor, who, at the same time, pushes Queen Sofía’s arm away. A few words seem to be exchanged, and Leonor again removes her grandmother’s hand from her shoulder. There have been no reports of what the two queens said.
  • King Felipe, 50, steps in and squeezes his wife’s shoulder, seemingly in an effort to calm things down, and the royal mask quickly snaps back into place. The royal family, which later posed together for a photograph outside the church, has made no official comment on the episode.
  • But gossip apparently exists even among the tangled branches of European royal family trees. Crown Princess Marie-Chantal of Greece, the wife of Queen Sofía’s nephew Crown Prince Pavlos, weighed in on Twitter: “No grandmother deserves that type of treatment!”
  • Others took to social media to make the point that there were more pressing problems facing Spain than discord among a family — even a royal one.
  • In the days since, Felipe and his wife have carried on calmly, appearing at a Mass commemorating the 25th anniversary of the death of King Juan Carlos I’s father.
  • The royals rarely get together, and to paraphrase Tolstoy, while all happy families are alike, this seemingly unhappy family has had its own political trials and tribulations.
  • Felipe ascended the throne after his father, King Juan Carlos, who helped usher the country toward democracy, announced in 2014 that he would abdicate.
  • The royal family was rocked in 2016 by tax fraud allegations against Princess Cristina, the sister of King Felipe. She was tried and acquitted on charges of corruption and embezzlement tied to an investigation into her husband, Iñaki Urdangarin, and his business associates. Mr. Urdangarin is appealing his prison sentence.
  • The country at large is in the throes of bigger problems, not least a political crisis unleashed by the failed attempt at secession by the government of the restive region of Catalonia.
  • King Felipe stepped into the fray when, in a televised address after a Catalan referendum on secession last year, a vote which went ahead despite Spanish courts having ruled it unconstitutional, he accused Catalonia’s separatist leaders of “inadmissible disloyalty” and of threatening the country’s Constitution and unity.
  • Recently, two Catalans — Enric Stern and Jaume Roura — were sentenced to 15 months in prison for insulting the monarchy, a felony, after setting fire to a life-size, upside-down photo of the royal couple during a visit by King Juan Carlos I to the northeastern city of Girona in September 2007.
  • The sentence was later reduced to a fine of about $3,300 each. The defendants took their case to the European Court of Human Rights, which ruled this year that the act was justifiable political criticism.
  • In an analysis about the Easter encounter, El País recalled how Queen Sofía had helped usher Letizia, a former television journalist, into the royal family. Relations between the two have been deteriorating since the birth of the younger princesses.
  • Now, the newspaper concluded, “15 years have passed and things have changed.”

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