REIGN IN SPAIN WOULD NOT ABSTAIN
Queen flew lover to NYC – royal tell-all
Queen Letizia of Spain brought her alleged lover on secret trips to New York City, all while her distraught husband had updates sent to him in “real time” by their bodyguards, a book claims.
The mother-of-two is the subject of “Letizia’s Silences,” in which veteran royal reporter Jaime Peñafiel claims the queen has frequently cheated on her “broken” husband, King Felipe.
According to the book, bodyguards joined Letizia and her alleged lover Jaime del Burgo on a 2011 visit to the Big Apple, information that would have been passed on to her husband.
“The bodyguards that protected Letizia wherever and whoever she went with had the obligation to inform,” the author writes. “Which is why Felipe had to know that Letizia was cheating on him in real time, given the fact that those bodyguards accompany her when she has official events and when she doesn’t.”
In-flight intrigue
The 2011 jaunt was allegedly one of two trips that Letizia, 51, made to the city with del Burgo, whom she reportedly dated before meeting Felipe in 2002 and who was once married to her sister.
On a flight from Madrid to New York in November 2012, the book reports, artist Cristobal Toral spotted Letizia traveling with a man believed to be del Burgo.
But as Toral passed by the royal on his way to the bathroom, she discreetly hid her face.
“The fact that she covered her face made him doubt who it was, even though a relatively short time before they had met each other at the UN Spanish Embassy where they chatted with her demonstrating that she had great admiration for his painting,” writes Peñafiel.
“Intrigued, he decided to repeat his trip to the bathroom. When he returned again to his seat, she not only covered her face but turned to face the window.”
Peñafiel claims that Felipe, 56, has been left “crushed and destroyed” and “wants to get out” of their marriage.
“As far as Felipe goes . . . the damage is not in the sex with which Letizia has been unfaithful to her husband, but in the ruthless feeling,” she writes.
“Letizia’s Silences” delves into the past of the monarch, a former journalist who was born Letizia Ortiz Rocasolano in the northern Spanish city of Oviedo.
It tells how she worked as a cigarette seller while living in Mexico and how Spanish government officials tried to suppress a topless portrait of her painted by a Cuban artist, Waldo Saavedra, before her wedding to Felipe.
In Peñafiel’s 2023 book, “Letizia & I,” del Burgo alleged that he met Letizia Ortiz before 2000, when she was a news anchor.
He said that he was close to asking her to marry him before she revealed that she was seeing a “diplomat,” who turned out to be then-Prince Felipe, after the pair met while she was covering an oil-tanker spill in 2002.
While dating Felipe, Peñafiel writes, Letizia took off for Costa Rica, apparently to make the royal jealous. The author calls it a “strategy” to torment Felipe, who was madly in love with Letizia and thought of distance as “the worst of all evils.”
Night before nups
Del Burgo has claimed his relationship with Letizia didn’t end but instead went undercover.
According to Tatler magazine, he alleged that the night before her wedding, he and Letizia had dinner, at which she told him, “Never leave me.”
“Del Burgo’s claims seem to include the notion that he and Letizia were lovers during the period of one of her pregnancies,” reported the society mag.
Letizia and Felipe’s daughter Princess Leonor, now heir to the throne, was born in 2005, while her sister, Infanta Sofia, arrived in 2007.
Last year, del Burgo, who is the son of former politician Jaime Ignacio del Burgo, posted and then deleted a photo of a pregnant Letizia wearing a black pashmina.
He claimed the royal sent it to him with the message, “Love. I am wearing your pashmina. It is like feeling you by my side. It looks after me. Protects me. I am counting the hours until we see each other again, love you, get out of here. Yours.”
Letizia allegedly called things off in 2011, but not before they looked at properties together and considered having a child of their own via a surrogate in Los Angeles, Tatler reported that del Burgo claimed.
She then allegedly encouraged him to date her sister Telma Ortiz.
In “Letizia & I,” del Burgo claims that the queen gave him a romantic message at his 2012 wedding to her sister.
“When the guests congratulated us,” he said, “Letizia’s turn came and kissing me on the cheek, she whispered into my ear, ‘We’ll be together again.’ ” He and Telma divorced in 2014. Peñafiel claims that the queen is “hated” by Felipe’s family for her “passive aggressive” nature.
The Post has reached out to the Spanish royal family’s office.
Asked how the book will affect the Spanish monarchy, meanwhile, one royal watcher remarked, “The Spanish media will close ranks, it’s barely being reported over here.
“They want to protect the family, just as Prince William and Kate Middleton are so popular and protected in Britain.”