The princess and the infanta return to pose alone, and smiling, at Christmas with which Zarzuela congratulates the holidays
The kings Felipe and Letizia have once again been left out of the photo for Christmas. They have done it to give all the prominence of the Christmas greetings from the Royal Family to Princess Leonor and Infanta Sofía. It is a measured pose, leaving no room for improvisation, in which the daughters of the Kings, dressed informally, appear smiling and embracing before an autumnal landscape. The snapshot was taken at the end of October, coinciding with the vacation week that she enjoyed the heir to the throne of her studies at the boarding school in Wales. Inside the Christmas greeting, you can read. “Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year 2023” written in block letters. And handwritten in the King’s handwriting, another message has been attached that reads: “Very affectionately and with our best wishes.” Behind him, the signature of Felipe, Letizia, Leonor and Sofía.
Since Don Felipe became the head of the Royal House, Zarzuela’s Christmases have alternated photographs of the four of them together and the small ones (not so much anymore) of the palace. In 2014 they opted for two images, an exterior one in which the King and Queen appeared, from behind, greeting the day of the proclamation of Felipe VI from the balcony of the Royal Palace and an interior one of the four members of the family at the door of the Congress of the Deputies of that historic June 19. The following year, the leading role went to the princess and the infanta, as happened in 2020, in the harsh year of the pandemic.
Previously, Leonor and Sofía had also reigned in the Christmas greetings in 2008, 2010 and 2012. In 2004, at the premiere of Doña Letizia as a member of the Royal Family, the then princes chose a photo of the two of them together; the following year with her newborn eldest daughter and in 2006 it was little Leonor, who months later would become an older sister, the sole protagonist.
Zarzuela, while presenting the Christmas card with which the Kings will congratulate this holiday season, also distributed that of the emeritus kings. The Christmas of Don Juan Carlos and Doña Sofía is, once again, an image of a National Heritage painting, ‘Nacimiento de Cristo. Nativity’ that hangs in the Palacio de los Austrias in El Escorial.
The emeritus, who since Don Juan Carlos established his residence in Abu Dhabi in August 2020 have only met twice (at the Zarzuela meal after the lightning trip to Sanxenxo and at the funeral of Queen Elizabeth II), have regularly resorted to Christmas representations to congratulate the holidays. They began in 2008, after the previous year they had posed with all their grandchildren (this congratulation did not have the controversy of 2005, when Zarzuela had to confirm having used photoshop to place all the little ones in the family). With two exceptions since then, in 2018 and 2019, they decided to pose together and smile.
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