Cristina de Borbón and Iñaki Urdangarin: 25 years of a wedding fueled by lies

Radiant but somewhat tired, the bride appeared in the Barcelona cathedral on the arm of her father, the King Juan Carlos of Bourbon. The infant Christinadressed in Lorenzo Caprilegave the “yes I do” to a handsome athlete who had left his lifelong girlfriend to enter Zarzuela and become the Duke of Palma.

The mother of Iñaki Urdangarin she was delighted with the fate of her offspring; her father, a relevant figure of the PNV and president of the Caja de Ahorros de Vitoria y Álava, not so much. Don Juan Carlos and Doña Sofía, after overcoming the disappointment that both had been disloyal to their respective partners (she was dating the water polo player Jesús Rollán) to frolic in the middle of the Olympic Games, gave the go-ahead with conditions, because the one who was going to become in the second real son-in-law, after the arrival of Jaime de Marichalar a couple of years before, he did not reach his daughter to the sole of the shoe. Sportsman, handsome, from a good family… but without the curriculum that the husband of an infanta from Spain should provide.

She, trained at the Complutense University of Madrid (Political Sciences) and in New York (a Master’s Degree in International Relations) and with five languages; he had finished COU and by the hair. On the Casa Real website they placed a non-existent degree in Economics, which they had to replace with a confusing “business studies” when it was discovered that it was false. His mother-in-law pulled strings and placed it. He, already retired from sports life, accepted that the emeritus decide how much he earned and where he earned it.

The Infanta Cristina and Iñaki Urdangarin said “yes, I want” that October 4, 1997. They did so before 1,500 guests from all over the world, including 40 representatives of royal houses, all impressed by a wedding dress by Lorenzo Caprile that entered the history of Spanish fashion: a design in ivory-colored Valencian silk, with a classic cut and French sleeves with an original boat neckline that exposed Doña Cristina’s shoulders, and a three-meter train. The infanta chose the floral tiara, a jewel commissioned by Alfonso XII from the British firm JP Collins in 1879 for her fiancee, Archduchess María Cristina de Habsburgo-Lorraine. She combined it with diamond chatons, one of the favorite pieces of Queen Victoria Eugenia, which is part of the jewels to pass by, and covered it with an embroidered veil, the same one with which Queen María Cristina had married and which Caprile workshop painstakingly restored.

The banquet took place in the Pedralbes Palace, residence of the kings in Barcelona. More than 500 waiters served a menu of royal quinoa with vegetables and fresh pasta, loin of sea bass with prawn soufflé and oil emulsion, and chocolate, crème anglaise and a strawberry wedding cake as a climax. After the party, the newlyweds enjoyed a luxurious honeymoon in Nepal and Jordan.

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Two years after the lavish nuptials, he came into the world his son Juan Valentinthe first of the large family: later they arrived Paul, Michael and finally Irene, the right eye of all of them, now converted into the best support of a mother devastated by the betrayal of the one who painted the love of her life. The ‘prince’ came out frog: prison, infidelities, blackmail… And what I will haunt you, infanta.