HRH The Princess of Asturias
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Princess Letizia of Spain (born Letizia Ortiz Rocasolano, on September 15, 1972 in Oviedo, Spain) is the wife of Prince Felipe, Prince of Asturias, the heir apparent to the Spanish throne. Before her marriage, she was an award-winning journalist and television presenter for CNN Plus and TVE. She is styled HRH The Princess of Asturias.
Early life
She is the eldest daughter of Jesús Ortiz Álvarez and Paloma Rocasolano. Her parents divorced in 1998. Her father is a journalist. Letizia's mother is a nurse and union official. Letizia's paternal grandmother was a well known radio broadcaster in Asturias for over 40 years. Letizia has two sisters: Telma and Erika.
Education and career
The princess took classes in communications at the Complutense University of Madrid, and later received a master's degree in audiovisual journalism. Letizia spent some time in Mexico, working at the newspaper Siglo XXI. She later worked as a journalist in the daily newspaper La nueva España, ABC, the news agency EFE, and the television channels Bloomberg, CNN Plus and TVE.
In 2000 she reported from Washington, DC on the presidential elections. In September 2001 she broadcast live from Ground Zero following the 9/11 attacks in New York and in 2003 she filed reports from Iraq following the war. In 2002 she sent several reports from Galicia in northern Spain following the ecological disaster when the oil tanker Prestige sank.
In August 2003, a few months before her engagement to Felipe, Letizia was promoted to become an anchor person of the TVE daily news program Telediario, a programme that is aired daily at 9pm CET and it is the most viewed newscast. This was, according to some people, a tactique of the Royal House so that the Spanish people became familiarised with the future Princess.
First marriage
Letizia Ortiz Rocasolano on TVE
She married Alonso Guerrero y Pérez, her high-school literature teacher, on 7 August 1999, at Almendralejo, in Badajoz. The marriage was dissolved by divorce in 2000.
Second marriage
The wedding of Letizia Ortiz Rocasolano to the Prince of Asturias occurred on May 22, 2004. The wedding took place in the Cathedral Santa María la Real de la Almudena in Madrid, Spain, and was a royal first for this cathedral, which was consecrated by the Pope in 1993. It had been nearly a century since the capital celebrated a royal wedding, as the present king and queen married in Athens, and the prince's sisters, Infanta Elena and Infanta Cristina, married in Seville and Barcelona respectively.
As her previous marriage was a civil ceremony, the Roman Catholic Church did not object to her marrying the Prince of Asturias.
Health concerns
Since the royal wedding, photographs have been published that show that the Princess of Asturias has become alarmingly thin. Gala magazine published photographs of the princess in March 2005 showing the elegantly dressed royal exhibiting frail arms, sharp shoulder blades, and sunken cheeks, an indication, observers stated, perhaps of anorexia. In an unusual move, representatives of the Spanish court denied that the princess was suffering from any illness.
Children
It was announced on May 8, 2005 that the Princess of Asturias was pregnant and on 31 October 2005, at 1:46am at the Ruber Clinic in Madrid, she gave birth to a girl, HRH Infanta Leonor, the first child for the couple, who will be baptised after Christmas of 2005. The godparents were the King and Queen of Spain.
It may be likely the Spanish law of succession could be changed to introduce cognatic primogeniture, meaning that the firstborn child of the monarch succeeds, regardless of gender, making Infanta Leonor second in line behind her father even if she has younger brothers, and would become a female heir apparent.
As for the infanta's future as a possible monarch, the Prince of Asturias was quoted in the Spanish Herald, when asked by a reporter if "a queen has [been] born," the prince answered, "For now a princess has born. But the logic of the times means that if the reform that the administration is planning takes place, she will be."
See also
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