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Sofia has no friends

When Pilar Urbano, the only journalist who has interviewed her, asked her if she had any friends, the Queen replied with disarming sincerity: “People to tell you regarding your things and share confidences? No, I do not have”. And it is true that she has no friends, because the only two human beings she trusts are her family: her sister, Irene, and her cousin, Tatiana Radziwill. Irene, gray as a little mouse, is so discreet that no one knows the tone of her voice, because she still speaks worse Spanish than her sister.

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Irene’s only boyfriends

Although he has never taken a wrong step, the few loving relationships that are known to him have been very controversial. The first, with the King’s gulf cousin, Gonzalo de Borbón, but Juan Carlos took him by the band and told him that, if this continued, he would expel him from Spain. Gonzalo, who shouldn’t have liked the little Greek princess very much either, obeyed without question. Later, Irene began dating Jesús Aguirre, when he had not yet married the Duchess of Alba. The ambitious Jesús wrote her poems and called her incessantly, until one day it was Juan Carlos who got on the phone and said: “Hey, you, leave my sister-in-law alone, she is innocent and believes everything. .. Don’t confuse her, I don’t want you to call her once more”. And thus he cut short a budding love that might have changed the destiny of many people! This made Irene take such an aversion to her brother-in-law that, apparently, she never spoke to him once more. She later became the girlfriend of the German ambassador Guido Brunner, but the relationship broke down when Brunner was implicated in a corruption case.

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His only love: his sister

Since then, her only love has been her sister, whom she has admired since they were little. Although, unlike her, Irene is not interested in material things. And she is not sociable; she does not even have a very close contact with her nephews, with whom she has shared a roof. She owns her own world and, as her mother, she prefers to speak with the dead.

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Marie Bonaparte’s granddaughter

The other person who is always by Sofia’s side is not a friend, no matter how many magazines call her that. She is her cousin Tatiana Radziwill. Tatiana’s grandmother, a descendant of Napoleon Bonaparte, is a legend in France and a film has even been made regarding her, whose role was played by Catherine Deneuve. Marie Bonaparte was the first female psychoanalyst: she first came to Freud as a patient to have him cure his frigidity, then she became his student and came to save him from the Nazis by taking him out of Austria and bringing him to London. She was married to Prince George of Greece, Sofia’s great-uncle, who was homosexual and was the lover of her own uncle Valdemar, a relationship accepted by all. And it is that sexual issues have always been openly discussed in Sofia’s family, that is, that prudish and puritanical image that we have of our Queen does not correspond to reality.

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indestructible ties

The bonds between the two cousins ​​are indestructible, since they shared the years of exile and the terrible hardships of the world war. Tatiana is immensely rich, but both she and her husband and her children have chosen to keep a low profile and do not flaunt her fortune. It is curious that, despite having lived together in Mallorca for many summers, Sofía’s and Tatiana’s children barely see each other.

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No need for more paripés

Nor does Tatiana, who is a staunch feminist, have a good relationship with the emeritus. At first they stayed in Marivent, but they have witnessed Juan Carlos’ contempt and humiliation of his beloved cousin and they have also had to wipe away his tears, and, in the end, they might not bear it. Now, with Juan Carlos in a perhaps permanent exile, and Letizia, Felipe and their daughters in unknown whereregardings, therefore without the need to make any paripé, Queen Sofía can dedicate herself to what she likes most: chatting with her sister and her cousin of the old days and go shopping! El Corte Inglés, Zara Home, the espadrille store, the Body Shop, jewelry stores… these are her places of worship, where she looks a lot before buying, carefully reads the labels and pays close attention to the prices. In one of those stores, by the way, they told us a couple of years ago: “The Queen tried to express herself in Spanish, but we realized that she did not feel comfortable and so we spoke to her in English.” This young clerk’s naive statement regarding Sofia is more explicit than all the articles we can write regarding her.

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