Anglo-Spanish Royals

The Spanish Royal visit to the UK

An Enduring  Relationship Revived

Ask your average English schoolboy what he knows about the relations  between the Spanish and British Royal families, and the likelihood is that he will mention Spain’s Philip 11nd, and the heroic defeat  of his Armada by Queen Elizabeth Ist.

A less selective and superficial history will show that relations between British and Spanish royals  have been mutually respectful, if not immune to occasional crisis, for over five  centuries.

As the recent biography of Spain’s great Queen Isabella of Castile by Giles Tremlett  reminds us , intermarriage and mutual deference between the respective royal courts  was an important legacy of her reign.

The royal relationship was destined to recover  from the Reformation and the  Armada. Despite her divorce by King Henry V111,  Isabella’s daughter Catherine of Aragon remained popular with the English people because of her nobility of spirit and care for the poor. Her venerated tomb lies in Peterborough Cathedral, while that of an earlier  medieval Spanish Queen , Eleanor of Castile, first wife of King Edward , lies in Westminster Abbey.

In more modern times, as Europe moved into the 20^th century, Queen Victoria Eugenie, known as Ena, granddaughter off the British  Empress Victoria,  married Alfonso X111.  The Spanish King was a great anglophile, developing a friendship with Winston Churchill-they were both keen polo players in their youth-and encouraging  his son Don Juan to train  with the British Royal navy.

Lest the English forget the Royal connection, Alfonso X111’s Royal Standard is preserved  in one of London’s  most distinguished  Catholic  Churches, that of St James’s  Spanish Place,. The location  traces its  origins back to the days when an earlier Church building’s   main benefactor was the Spanish  embassy. Meanwhile in Exeter College, Oxford the professorial chair of Hispanic Studies is named in his memory since it was established  in the late 1920’s.

Alfonso X111 was forced to abdicate in 1931 with the proclamation of  the Republic. He  lived out his final years in exile in Rome, as did his son Juan, , after the end of the Spanish Civil War, in Portugal. It was not until after the death of the dictator  Franco in 1975, that the monarchy in Spain was restored, under Alfonso X111’s grandson, King Juan Carlos Ist,,with his Greek royal princess  Sofia becoming Queen of Spain.

Spain’s first monarchs of the modern era  soon personified the country’s  new democratic spirit  while their personal  and institutional links with the House of Windsor, helped strengthen UK-Spanish bilateral relations within Europe, despite the competing sovereignty claims over Gibraltar.

The decision by Prince  Charles and  Princess Diana to start their honeymoon in 1981  on the Royal Yacht in Gibraltar  did not go down well in Spain. But the ice was subsequently broken when Queen Elizabeth  invited   the Spanish monarchs to London in an official capacity in 1986.  Juan Carlos returned the favour by organizing a private break for the Prince of Wales and the Princess of Wales and their two young sons William and Harry. There were housed in the Spanish royal residence of Marivent . They also went for  a cruise on the King of Spain’s yacht ‘Fortuna’, to watch a Royal regatta, and visit some of the islands popular sites, including the Ses Iletes beach, and  Marineland waterpark where Wllliam and Harry enjoyed themselves.

Photographs  taken at the time of the Royal families together show a warm gathering with no sign of the strain  that  the marriage of the Prince and Princess of Wales was already under. Island residents recall Diana spent much of her time  swimming in the  waters of Mallorca’s southern beaches, while Charles  painted watercolours of the picturesque landscapes around Valldemosa, where the Polish  composer  Chopin and his French lover Amantine-Lucile-Aurore Dupin, better known by her pseudonym George Sand, once stayed.

The Windsors returned to Mallorca in the summers of  of 1987, 1988 and 1990. Diana, who had already spent some time before her marriage  in  Port d’Amdratx returned  one more time in  1996, as a divorcee , and stayed at  a luxury hotel La Residencia  in Deia, as a guest of the billionaire entrepreneur  Richard Branson.

Diana’s death in  August 1997 in a  car crash in Paris in the midst of an increasingly visceral  public  rift with her ex-husband fuelled a  simmering crisis in  the House of Windsor. It tested royal protocol and friendship not least among the Spanish Royal family, and overshadowed a state visit  by the Queen Elizabeth and the Duke of Edinburgh made to Spain the following year.

With the memory of Diana generating  enormous sympathy in the Spanish media for several years after her death, it was not until 2011 that Prince Charles and the Duchess of Cornwall , judged that the time was ripe to restore the link and  make an official visit to Spain.

Since then relations between the Royals of the two countries have been generally on a more discreet basis, with King Juan Carlos making private visits to the UK to go shooting with friends, and Queen Sofia separately visiting London on cultural and shopping outings,  with her own close friends.

Since  2014 , when King Juan Carlos abdicated in favour of his son Felipe V1, he and Queen Sofia have reduced their official duties, although she came to London last year as guest of  honour, together withe Prince Andrew the Duke of York,  at the  Gala dinner, marking the centenary of the charity the BritishSpanishSociety. While in the capital she had a private meeting with the Queen , where the foundation was laid for a rescheduling of  a  State visit by King Felipe and Queen Letizia, which was postponed last year because the formation of a  new Spanish government was still the subject of ongoing  political discussions.

The programme of the latest State visit  to the UK includes, as is traditional, an official welcome by Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip and a dinner hosted by them at Buckingham Palace .

But this visit will also involve the heir to the Crown,  Prince Charles, his second wife the Duchess of Cornwall,  and Prince Harry..The youngest son of Prince Charles and the late Diana  will accompany King Felipe, a fellow trained military officer, to lay a wreath at the tomb of the unknown soldier in Westminster  Abbey. The occasion will underline  not only a professional bond, but also the seamless passing of the baton for sustaining the bilateral  royal relationship to a  younger generation.