It’s one of those sentences that makes less sense the more you look at it. The King of Spain’s wife’s ex-boyfriend, who is also her ex-brother-in-law, has claimed that he wasn’t really her ex-boyfriend when we thought he was. As scandalous summaries go, this one’s notable for including its own stroke symptoms.
So it’s useful, then, that Jaime del Burgo, the ex-ex in question (we’ll get to that), has now provided a bullet-point outline of the Spanish royal brouhaha, which, in recent weeks, has enthralled the public.
The latest development in a saga that has included alleged death threats, a suggestive pashmina, and some delicious court snobbery unfolded on December 26, when del Burgo took to social media and outlined the “four stages” of his supposed affair with Queen Letizia, who has been married to Prince Felipe VI, the current King of Spain, since 2004.
Del Burgo lists them as:
1) Love relationship, from 2002 to 2004.
2) Friends and confidants, from 2004 to 2010.
3) Long-lasting and continuous loving relationship, 2010 and 2011.
4) As [in-laws] from 2012 to 2016.
So that’s that, then. And “love relationships” are surely the most sought-after encounters. But what’s slightly less straightforward is how this new time line contradicts the existing narrative. Previously, Queen Letizia and King Felipe were the fairy-tale, picture-perfect, Wills-and-Kate-grade darlings of the Iberian monarchy—having been happily and handsomely married since 2004. It’s all a bit of a shock. No wonder cronies have been dragged out to deliver overwrought endorsements such as: “The defence of Queen Letizia’s honour, of her right to honour, is equivalent to the defence of the right to honour and freedom of all Spanish citizens.” Which, you’ll notice, is also not quite a denial.
Jaime del Burgo took to social media to outline the “four stages” of his supposed affair with Queen Letizia.
The trouble continued after a writer named Jaime Peñafiel claimed that Letizia was del Burgo’s “great love” in the investigative newspaper El Cierre Digital. At the time, Peñafiel had just released a book called Letizia and I, recounting the queen’s relationship with del Burgo—a colorful figure whose personal Web site lists finance, construction, robotics, property, the movie business, and crypto-currency as among his professional experiences. What’s more, according to the site, del Burgo “still holds the record of becoming the youngest doctor in Spain.”
Not long after, del Burgo stirred the pot further by releasing a sultry selfie of Letizia, while she was pregnant with one of her two daughters by King Felipe. In it, she’s seen wearing a pashmina scarf, and has apparently attached a message to del Burgo. “Love. I’m wearing your pashmina. It’s like feeling you next to me. It takes care of me. Protects me. I count the hours until we see each other again. Love You. Get out of here. Yours.”
Del Burgo then went on to detail several increasingly intimate moments between the pair, like this one, allegedly from July 2010. “Lying in the same hammock, under the pool porch, facing each other, [Letizia] told me ‘I love you,’ and I replied ‘I love you.’” He then said, “That same night our love relationship continued, interrupted years before, because love was always there since our first trip to Venice in 2002.” In the wake of these disclosures, del Burgo says he’s received “death threats,” and reiterated that he recognizes “only one king in heaven—and his name is Jesus of Nazareth.” The royal household, meanwhile, has pointedly refused to comment on the allegations.
Queen Letizia and del Burgo first met sometime before 2000, just after her divorce from a teacher nine years her senior. The pair apparently embarked on an intense relationship, and del Burgo alleges that he was about to propose one night in 2002 when she suddenly admitted over dinner that she had recently begun dating a mysterious “diplomat.” And it soon became clear her suitor was the future King Felipe. (Del Burgo went on to marry Letizia’s younger sister Telma in 2012; they divorced in 2014.)
At that time, Letizia was a high-profile news anchor, and she and the then prince apparently bonded during his visit to an oil spill off the coast of Spain, which she was reporting on. Not everyone was thrilled by their engagement, however, which was announced in late 2003. King Juan Carlos, the then ruler, said that Letizia was the “worst thing that happened” to the monarchy, apparently appalled by her status as both a working woman and a divorcée. Juan Carlos’s pals would refer to Letizia as “the maid,” and he liked to say that, as a journalist, she was the “enemy within.”
King Juan Carlos was right to fear press scrutiny. In fact, by far the most shocking thing about any story involving the words “Spanish,” “royal,” and “affair” is that it doesn’t revolve around him. As per previous reporting in Air Mail, Juan Carlos—who has been living in exile since 2020, owing to a storm cloud of financial snafus and sexual misadventures—is the nation’s unsurpassed philanderer-in-chief. He is said to have had more than 5,000 sexual partners, according to one retired colonel and author, and a former lover claimed he possessed an “illness” for money. He reportedly once made a handsy pass at Princess Diana, and never met a dodgy billionaire he didn’t milk. (As I wrote in 2020, when it comes to describing Juan Carlos, you can really just chuck the words “offshore account,” “eccentric foreign potentate,” “hefty backhander,” and “blonde mistress” into a hat and you’ll probably get pretty close to the truth.)
Juan Carlos’s pals would refer to Letizia as “the maid.”
After experiencing partial disgrace and abdicating in 2014, Juan Carlos later vanished in full-throttle disgrace in 2020, amid bribery and tax investigations. He’s now reportedly holed up in the U.A.E., but the geographical distance hasn’t stopped him from getting sucked into the drama, with some conspiracy theorists suggesting that he’s the puppet master behind the rumors of the queen’s affair. (Juan Carlos has “emphatically” denied this in other press.) Federico Jiménez Losantos, an El Mundo columnist and popular radio D.J., claims this dirt has been manufactured to hurt King Felipe, the former king’s upstart replacement, and make way for Juan Carlos’s return to power.
“It’s the ‘nth’ campaign orchestrated against Felipe VI,” Losantos said on-air, adding: “It is Juan Carlos’s circles who are stirring it up.” Later, Pilar Eyre, a longtime Spanish royal correspondent, told a radio station, “It is true that there is a campaign to smear Felipe’s reign, stemming from the very ranks of the monarchy.”
Others rumors, meanwhile, hold that del Burgo’s smears come with the backing of Pedro Sánchez, Spain’s Socialist prime minister, as a way of “unnerving” and de-stabilizing King Felipe’s rule, according to The Times of London. As conspiracy theories go, it’s a doozy. We’ve all done silly things after a breakup. But very few of us have attempted to bring down an entire constitutional monarchy just because we never quite got over our ex.
Joseph Bullmore is a Writer at Large at AIR MAIL and the editor of Gentleman’s Journal in London