The press services of the House of the King do not report on the dresses worn by the Queen. They know that she doesn’t like the clothes she wears overshadowing the work she does. Nor is it necessary. Fashion firms make sure that you know as soon as you put on one of their models, which stocks quickly run out. La Zarzuela is aware of the money that moves the image of Doña Letizia and only informs about her outfit when it is linked to an initiative to promote, such as the APRAM (Association for Prevention, Reintegration and Attention to Prostituted Women). When, in the words of a person in charge of the house, “the clothes are the message”. Like this week in Paraguay.
The Spanish Constitution dedicates an article to the role of the Queen consort, number 58, and the only thing it says is what she cannot do: “She will not be able to assume constitutional functions, except as provided for by the Regency”; that is to say, the possibility of replacing the King in the event of his death during the minority of the Princess of Asturias.
In Spain there is no first lady status, so the wife of the head of state must invent her job. Doña Letizia has inherited from Queen Sofía the honorary presidency of several NGOs (Red Cross, Unicef, FAD), has accepted representative positions in some (such as FAO) and has been involved in others without assuming any position (such as the Spanish Federation Rare Diseases). Account for its activities, about 200 a year (most shared with the King), with a reduced Secretariat, directed by the Major General Jose Manuel Zuleta, although it relies on the protocol, security or press apparatus of the Royal Household. In addition, he receives an allowance of 163,000 euros per year, granted by the King.
Doña Letizia, according to her collaborators, does not like decorative positions. Although the font is not very impartial, it is clear that its character fits badly with a merely ornamental paper. It is enough to observe it to verify that, each time it can, ask, inquire, comment. He speaks with his hands as much as with his lips and, at 49 years and seven of consort reign, he has not lost his passion, although he has gained in security and restraint.
“Since the State pact against Gender Violence was signed in 2017,” sources from La Zarzuela underline, the Queen has been personally involved in the fight against this scourge and has participated in 110 activities related to it. The date is important because the Queen cannot support initiatives that do not generate political consensus. The problem is that since then a party has broken in that breaks that consensus. And not only that: Vox also stands out from the UN’s sustainable development goals, which guide Spanish humanitarian aid.
The Queen goes up without makeup and wearing a wide and comfortable sweater to the A330 plane that on Tuesday, October 2, takes her to Paraguay. International cooperation trips are the most visible part of his own agenda and it is already the sixth he has carried out since the enthronement of Felipe VI. There are 14 hours of flight and a report from APRAM on trafficking networks is brought as a reading. One in every five pregnancies in the South American country is of children under 15 years of age and every day there are seven complaints of child sexual abuse, the majority by relatives. At the origin of the problem there is an ancestral institution, the criadazgo: Rural families give their daughters to wealthy homes that give them shelter, food and school in exchange for domestic service, explains Aníbal Cabrera, from the Coordinator for the Rights of Children and Adolescents, after speaking with the Queen. Many end up being victims of slave labor and sexual abuse and are easy prey for trafficking networks. Its tentacles reach Spain: Operation Apia, between the police of the two countries, dismantled in October a gang of pimps that trafficked with adolescents.
In Asunción, Mrs. Letizia is received on foot by the first lady, Silvana Abdo. The Queen gets off the plane wearing trousers, a white shirt and the red vest of the Spanish cooperation. The following day, Deputy Celeste Amarilla, of the Liberal Party, in opposition, charged in Parliament against the outfit of the “journalist turned Queen.” “We deserved one of the dresses that you keep in your closet, not the vest that your guard and your secretary wear,” he reproaches him. Uniformes Fabricato, a Paraguayan SME from which the Spanish cooperation commissioned the vests, comes out in defense of its product and of whoever wears it.
In less than 48 hours, the Queen visits the Technical Office for Cooperation in Asunción, the comprehensive care center for women in Encarnación (which facilitates early diagnosis of breast and uterine cancer), the workshop school in the same city, the missions Jesuits of Trinidad del Paraná and Jesús de Tavarangüé, the Juan de Salazar cultural center and the Bañado Sur Family Care Center, all of them with Spanish funding.
Although I do not use that word, most of the initiatives sponsored by the Queen have a feminist aspect: it is about strengthening women so that they are not vulnerable prey to gender violence in its many forms: physical or psychological aggression, sexual abuse, labor slavery or prostitution.
The Bañado Sur, which is periodically flooded by the floods of the Paraguay River, is one of the most miserable neighborhoods in Asunción. Many of its 25,000 inhabitants live off the gigantic landfill they have as a neighbor. Some with creativity, such as the nine women who work in the Cateura workshop, which not only shares a name with the garbage dump but also uses its waste to produce jewelry. The Queen and the Paraguayan first lady wear two necklaces made of recycled brass, cable and copper.
At the Escuela Taller, Doña Letizia interrogates Jessica and Majali, two girls of 19 and 21 years of age who dropped out of school and took a cooking course to enter the tourism sector. “He’s very humble,” says Jessica. “And very kind,” adds his partner, surprised that a Queen has gone to the kitchen where they learn to prepare some corn cakes. When saying goodbye, Doña Letizia tells them: “Spanish cooperation is going to continue here and it is not going to abandon you.” It is not a promise, which the Queen cannot make, but news. Next to him, the Secretary of State for International Cooperation, Pilar Cancela, nods.
The trip ends with lunch at the presidential palace. Against what many expect, the Queen comes with the aid vest. No one will photograph her in Paraguay in any other outfit that is not the uniform of the work she has come to do. For its part, the Paraguayan firm has multiplied in a few days the sales of a garment, according to its advertising, “ideal for guards, secretaries and queens.”
The royal journey unlocks a credit of 175 million
The Queen’s trip has helped unlock a loan of more than 175 million dollars (of which 105 will be provided by the Inter-American Development Bank and 10 by the EU) to undertake sewerage and sanitation works in the Lambaré basin, in the suburbs of Asunción, which will benefit a population of half a million people. The loan from the Spanish Fonprode (Funding for the Promotion of Development), for 60 million, has been approved since October 2020, but the Paraguayan Government has not given the green light until now due to its fear of borrowing even at a very low interest rate . Paraguay is around $ 5,000 in income per capita (with abysmal social inequality), which has made it a middle-income country and has scared off many donors, such as Germany. Spain, which has allocated 300 million euros to the country in the last 30 years, has committed to investing 142 million in the current 2020-23 partnership framework, although aid is turning more and more from donations to loans, which that supposes a change of paradigm.
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