in his book Felipe VI’s men (Editorial Almuzara), the journalist Jose Apezarena reveals secrets and anecdotes about the king, from his childhood to the present day. Apezarena discovers a dancing monarch, the Atlético de Madrid fan, his nicknames, loves, joys or his sorrows. He also looks at the relationship with his wife, parents and his sisters. The author is convinced that “the Spanish do not know don Felipe” and believes that “very little is known about him.”
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He explains that Felipe VI is a “key king for this country, due to his abilities, his history and his will to do things well.” And he adds: “This ignorance is a mistake. The Monarchy continues to be a factor of stability, it is important for things to go well,” he points out.
Apezarena points out that the son of Juan Carlos I He is paying a price that does not correspond to him: “Right now the two kings barely maintain contact. They talk to each other, they have no choice, because Don Juan Carlos does not want to do anything that is harmful to his son. They both have family affairs and interests common”.
“In his school childhood,” our interlocutor continues, “Felipe went to class very short of money and asked his classmates for loans, which he later returned when his father paid him,” he tells us. “He did not have large amounts, at home they instilled in him the value of earning things with his own effort, and that is what he applies to his daughters.”
He was involved in plays at his school. At eleven years old he played the commander of the work Peribáñez and the Commander of OcañaHe liked the theater a lot. He was a good actor, according to the book: “He did not do it badly. The cane that he used in the play of the commander he took from his father’s office.” That ability to act on stage came in handy for speaking in public now.
Don Felipe “liked to go to camps, walk in the mountains, take risks in difficult places” and he found a good coach in César Pérez de Tudela. “The Queen Sofia He would go to those camps to see how his son was doing.” They called him the dancing prince. “He loves to dance and he does it very well. That has been inherited from his mother. He even tap dances.”
In the palace they had a very exotic animal, a cheetah that was loose in the gardens: “Visitors were terribly scared. And when it grew up they had to lock it up,” reveals Apezarena.
The king was a more religious man in his youth: “He worked as an altar boy in the chapel in the palace. He received a fairly complete religious education.”
The book of dangerous friends speaks: “I mean the group of students at his school who were a bit hooligans and reckless. They had somewhat vandal behavior,” recalls the biographer. “Someone betrayed him years later when he began dating Isabel Sartorius,” the author says, referring to those who “spoke with journalists and filtered the places where the appointments took place.” Remember Apezarena that Isabel Sartorius She was not welcome in the royal family: “They did not believe in that relationship. She was older than him, the daughter of divorcees, with a mother with a troubled past,” she adds. “In addition, Isabel got tired of waiting for the courtship to become official. She was fed up. She felt persecuted and had no life. And the relationship did not work out.”
Same as happened with Eva Sannum. “He introduced her to the Spanish little by little, he was convinced that she was a candidate to become queen, but she was a foreigner, she had no idea about the situation in Spain, she was not Catholic, she appeared in some photos posing as a lingerie model” , lists the author as the causes of the end of their relationship. “Articles began to be published against her, promoted from circles close to the palace. Surveys were carried out in which the opinion of Eva was negative. Everything played against her,” Apezarena concludes.
In the end he married Joy, who was a separated woman, a commoner: “She was not liked in La Zarzuela either. Felipe was in charge of keeping the courtship a secret to avoid any type of plebiscite. It is true that his father did not like Letizia, but his son told him that I was willing to be a single king if they didn’t agree to marry that woman.” And he adds: “Our monarch found out very soon that his father was unfaithful to his mother. He was one of the first to find out about Don Juan Carlos’s extramarital relationship with Marta Gayá and suffered a lot. He realized that his mother also it tasted and it hurt a lot.”
Regarding the relationship that Felipe maintains with his sisters, the author recalls that when the scandal of the Noos case was discovered, he broke radically with Cristina: “He avoided a photograph of the two together like the plague. Now, the situation has relaxed and they have coincided sometimes in the palace and at funerals. And with Elena the relationship is more normal”.
Queen Letizia does not relate to her husband’s friends and cousins: “Some of Felipe’s friends fell regular from the beginning. In fact, the king has distanced himself from them,” says the author. “Letizia never hides what she thinks of people and if she doesn’t like someone, she says so. And the king pays much attention to her.” Apazarena reveals that in some circles the queen is referred to as “the ungovernable” and assures that His Majesty’s wife believes that being consort is “a profession that does not imply working 24 hours a day. She fulfills her palatial role, but then We see the woman who continues to have her old friends and goes with her husband to have dinner at the houses of other friendly couples”.
Apezarena maintains that the kings, who next year will celebrate two decades as a married couple, “have had the odd crisis.” He points out that “Letizia had a very bad time with the whole Urdangarin issue and she began to go out there with friends,” according to the author. “They have told me that they gave her a call for attention and she rectified,” he adds. About the few insults that have come out from Letizia towards Doña Sofía, the author of the book says that they worry the king a lot: “Felipe doesn’t like them at all,” he concludes.
Throughout his life, Don Felipe has been given several nicknames: “They called him by the diminutive of Flip, at the military academy they nicknamed him ‘the most cadet’, because he always said he was one of the others, also Winston, for being the longest of blondes”.
“He is a very soccer fan. A great follower of Atlético de Madrid, but not a closed fan. His father, who is not a mattress fan, once said that his son has turned out to be a frog,” he says. Politically, “he is more liberal than we might think,” says Apezarena. “He respects all ideologies, whether on the right or on the left. And he has always been for equality between men and women,” he concludes.
The author, Jose Apezarena, is a journalist with a PhD in Communication and has held management positions at Europa Press, Ya, Antena 3 de Radio, Cadena COPE and Expansión, and is currently editor of El Confidencial Digital. He has directed and presented the radio program La Linterna, and has published articles in dozens of newspapers. He is a professor at the Villanueva University, a talk show host on La Sexta, Cuatro, TRECE, Telemadrid and La 1 de TVE. Biographer of Felipe VI, he is the author of books such as Así es el príncipe (with Carmen Castilla), All the King’s Men, The Prince, Royal Wedding, The Queen (with other authors) and Felipe and Letizia. The conquest of the throne. He has directed and presented a series of 18 chapters on Felipe de Borbón and a biographical documentary on the Prince of Asturias, both broadcast by Telecinco.