The Queen of Spain was awarded for her patronage work by the Montblanc de la Culture Arts on Wednesday at Zarzuela Palace. Her Majesty is the first recipient of this year’s 20th anniversary award, which she won for her Queen Sofia Foundation.
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Lutz Bethge, CEO Montblanc International, highlighted Queen Sofiaʼs commitment to the disadvantaged members of society and praised her efforts to help them get access to education and allow them to participate in cultural life, thus improving their future prospects.
Besides winning a trophy, the Queen also received a €15,000 check which she donated to her foundation.
Set up in May 1977, the Queen Sofia Foundation is a non-profit and cultural organization. Since 1994, it has been running and promoting numerous educational and health projects. Furthermore, the foundation also promotes social and humanitarian aid projects, from which children, the elderly, immigrants, the disabled and those affected by natural disasters have been beneficiaries.
Montblanc, a company that makes luxurious items such as leather goods, expensive writing utensils and eyeglasses, set up its Culture Arts Award in 1992 in order to reward the work of outstanding private patrons of the arts.
Sebastián Piñera, the President of Chile, made his first state visit to Spain Monday. He and his wife, Cecilia, were welcomed by the Spanish royals at Zarzuela Palace where the couple had lunch with King Juan Carlos, Queen Sofia, Prince Felipe and Princess Letizia.
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But the real excitement for royal watchers was the state dinner later that evening. It brought out the opportunity for the Queen and Princess to wear their gowns and tiaras.
King Juan Carlos gave a speech at the gala dinner, that the “firm”commitment to peace, freedom, democracy and human rights shared by Spain and Chile, and their joint commitment to multilateral diplomacy…the more necessary at this time that ever.”
His Majesty also mentioned the Chilean earthquake last year, which he said showed the “strength and spirit” of the Chileans.
“It was the reaction of a great nation, a modern, efficient and supportive,”said the King, who also praised “the efficiency and good work again Chileans” to “rescue the unforgettable and happy for the 33 miners trapped in Atacama.”
He also praised the increasing role of Chile in the international community, saying “it gives this nation a great base to move towards its goal of eradicating poverty and stand in leading the development of South America.”
The point of Piñera’s trip was to strengthen ties with Spain.
Besides hosting a state dinner for the Chilean First Couple, the royals also did other engagements with them. On Tuesday, Prince Felipe and Princess Letizia opened with the Piñeras’ the exhibition ” Don Qui. El Quijote de Matta”, at Cervantes Institute of Madrid.
Also on Tuesday night, the President and First Lady hosted a reception in honor of King Juan Carlos and Queen Sofia.
On Monday, members of the Spanish royal family were at El Pardo Palace to give out the National Sports Awards 2010. The award recognizes the athletes, sports associations and other entities that have most highlighted in competition or in supporting the promotion of sports throughout last year.
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King Juan Carlos, Queen Sofia, Prince Felipe, Princess Letizia and Infanta Elena personally handed the large trophies to the winners. Some of the awards were named after the royals themselves.
For example, the Reina Sofia award goes to the Spanish athlete who has distinguished his or herself over the year in their sporting performance, both nationally and internationally. For 2010, it was mountaineer Edurne Pasaban Lizarribar.
Other awards named after the royals included the Premio Don Felipe de Borbon, Princess of Asturias National Prize, the Award of HRH Doña Elena, and the Award of HRH Doña Cristina.
13 trophies were given out to various athletes, including the Spanish football team which won the 2010 World Cup, riders Jorge Lorenzo and Marc Marquez, the Andalusian Federation of Football, athlete Eusebio Cáceres, hockey player Luciana Aymar, the Foundation for Sport Equestrian Championships International Open ATP Spain Castilla y León “El Espinar, the City of Leganés, Universidad Camilo Jose Cela, the advertising agency Villar-Rosàs and tennis player Manolo Santana.
After delivery, His Majesty King Juan Carlos gave “a very special and warm congratulations” to the winners in 2010, “the most brilliant years of the history of Spanish sports.”
“Sport, in its most noble and extensive expression must muster the effort and cooperation of all” and “not only in the disciplines of equipment and more popular,” in which Spain is now the first country in the world, but also in the individual and the less widespread. ”
King Juan Carlos and Queen Sofia of Spain are currently in St. Petersburg, Russia to inaugurate the Spain-Russia Dual Year, which is dedicated to cement the economic and cultural ties between the two nations.
AP Photo/ RIA Novosti, Dmitry Astakhov, Presidential Press Service
They, along with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and First Lady Svetlana Medvedeva, spent most of Friday at the Hermitage Museum to exchange art works at the landmark museum to begin the cultural links.
“Russia and Spain are two countries that are essential for understanding European culture, history and identity,” said King Juan Carlos at the ceremony in the Throne Room of the Hermitage Museum, formerly the Winter Palace of the czars.
“Both countries not only wish to give renewed impetus to the great tide of understanding and friendship that has always linked our peoples, but to make clear our shared goal of expanding and deepening bilateral relations,” the king also said at the inauguration of “The Prado in the Hermitage” exhibition.
The exhibit will showcase 66 works of art from Spain’s Prado Museum by such creators as Velazquez, Goya, El Greco, Titian and Rubens.
President Medvedev, who intends to make his second visit to Spain in November, said that the Dual Year program, with more than 350 commercial, cultural and scientific activities, “opens new possibilities of contact between peoples.”
REUTERS/Mikhail Klimentyev/RIA Novosti/Kremlin
Queen Sofia and First Lady Svetlana Medvedeva toured the rest of the Hermitage to get a look at Russian fine art, plus the apartment where Alexander Pushkin lived.
This coming November will see 170 art pieces from the Hermitage come to the Prado as part of the cultural exchange. It will have work by Rubens and Watteaau as well as Cezanne, Renoir, Gauguin and Matisse.
Earlier on Friday, the Spanish King and the Russian President held a business forum in which they discussed the potential for more economic ties in the field of technological modernization and innovation. Juan Carlos emphasized that Spanish business leaders “are wholeheartedly turning to Russia.”
“Russia and Spain each has one foot in Europe and the other in the world, and as global players they have an enormous potential for cooperation,” said Antonio Brufau, CEO of Spanish energy giant Repsol YPF.
On Thursday, the royal family of Spain greeted German President Christian Wulff and his wife Bettina, as the couple began a one day working visit to the country.
The royals and the German first couple posed outside Zarzuela Palace before going indoors for a private lunch.
Wulff is in Spain to discuss with Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero about the country’s reforms to help it get out of an economic struggle where 20 percent of Spaniards are unemployed. Wulff told reporters that he supports Spain’s reforms that will ward off international bailouts.
“The ‘friendship’ between the two countries needed to prove its worth at a time of economic crisis,” he told journalists on a plane to Spain.
On Thursday, the royals of Spain gathered for the annual Pascua Militar, when the Spanish military is celebrated. King Juan Carlos, Queen Sofia, Prince Felipe and Princess Letizia met with the country’s defense leaders at Zarzuela Palace. The King gave a speech both praising the military and calling for budget cuts to not affect defense.
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Even the Minister of Defense, Carme Chacon, echoed the King during her speech. She said “the defense of Spain should be above any economic climate.”
King Juan Carlos also urged the troops to be prepared to help to protect common security with Spain’s NATO partners “wherever they are required.”
The King praised Spanish soldiers for their service in Lebanon, Uganda, the Indian Ocean and Afghanistan, as well as Bosnia & Herzegovina. The latter Spanish troops ended their peacekeeping service in 2010.
Also discussed at Pascua Militar was talk of ending Spain’s involvement with Afghanistan this year.
Thursday marked the 100 years since the birth of the mother of King Juan Carlos. The entire Spanish royal family, including Juan Carlos’ sisters and grandchildren, gathered at the chapel in the royal palace for the mass commemorating Doña Maria de las Mercedes de Borbon y Orleans.
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Born in Madrid on December 23, 1910, Maria was the third of four children of Prince Charles of Bourbon (widow of the Infanta Maria de las Mercedes, eldest daughter of Alfonso XII), and Princess Louise of Orleans, daughter of the Count of Paris.
She married Don Juan de Borbón, Count of Barcelona, with whom she had four children: Infanta Pilar, Infanta Margarita, the Infante Alfonso, who died accidentally in Estoril in 1956, and Prince Juan Carlos, now the King of Spain.
Maria died on January 2nd 2000, at the age of 89, while spending Christmas with her family at the residence of La Mareta, Lanzarote.
REUTERS/Borja/Pool
For Thursday’s mass, in the rarely used palace chapel, military archbishop Juan del Rio officiated the service. The national anthem was played before the ceremony began.
REUTERS/Borja/Pool
Over a hundred people attended today’s service, including those who worked for the late Doña Maria and those who head her charity foundation.
After the service, the Spanish royals held a reception in which glasses of wine were toasted.
The leader of the Roman Catholic Church, Pope Benedict XVI, spent the weekend in Spain for a two day visit. He was there mainly to push the Church’s agenda in an increasingly secular country, but also to visit a Galician cathedral and consecrate a Barcelona basilica.
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The Pope arrived in Santiago de Compostela and was greeted by the heir to the Spanish throne, Prince Felipe and his wife Princess Letizia. He visited the cathedral, which has been the site of the St. James celebrations this year. There, the pontiff prayed at what it believed to be the burial place of the apostle.
Later in the day, the pope held an open air mass at Obradoiro square which Felipe and Letizia attended.
On Sunday, Benedict went to Barcelona to consecrate Antoni Gaudi’s unfinished basilica, the Sagrada Familia. King Juan Carlos and Queen Sofia were there for the event, along with 6,500 faithful Spaniards. The royal couple were then present for the mass inside the basilica.
The Pope has been openly blasting Spain’s liberal society during this visit. The country has loosened up abortion laws and legalized gay marriage in recent years.
REUTERS/Andres Ballesteros/Pool
“I too wish to encourage Spain and Europe to build their present and to project their future on the basis of the authentic truth about man, on the basis of freedom which respects this truth and never harms it,” he said during the mass in Obradoiro square.
“The generous and indissoluble love of a man and a woman is the effective context and foundation of human life,” the pope said in Barcelona.
“For this reason the Church resists every form of denial of human life and gives its support to everything that would promote the natural order in the sphere of the institution of the family,” he added.
Some Spaniards have been protesting the pontiff’s visit. There was a gay kiss-in where hundreds of gay couples kissed in the Barcelona streets as the pope mobile drove by.
Pope Benedict XVI is expected to return to Spain next year. He will attend World Youth Day in Madrid.
Wednesday saw Spain’s Queen Sofia visit the headquarters of Manos Unidas to commemorate the organization’s 50th year. The Madrid based charity focuses on helping the disadvantaged around the world. The Queen met with Manos Unidas’ board and staff members, and even left a kind message for them.
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“To Manos Unidas with all my affection in their 50 years. Congratulations for this work carried out with such dedication. Sofia R. (3 / 11 / 2010)”, she wrote in the charity’s guestbook.
The President of Manos Unidas, Myriam Garcia Abrisqueta, told Her Majesty: “We know that you know us for many years, we continue on our journey, and know, too, your great sensitivity to those most in need,” stressed Abrisqueta.
At the end of the visit, the Queen received as a souvenir from the organization a pirece of wood, from Mozambique, and a book published to mark the 50 anniversary of Manos Unidas.
Manos Unidas is a Catholic organization that emerged in 1960 under the first organized campaign against hunger in Spain, in response to an international call from the FAO, and that after five decades, has become one of the NGOs more active and more present in those parts of the world hardest hit by poverty.
Present in over 65 countries in Asia, Africa, America and Oceania, where it has funded more than 25,000 charity projects in the past 50 years, Manos Unidas received in 2009 the volunteer work of more than 4,500 donors, mostly women, and aid more than 80,000 members.
On an island three hours from Athens, the former King of Greece’s second son, Prince Nikolaos, married his longtime girlfriend, Tatiana Blatnik. The nuptials took place at Ayios Nikolaos monastery on Spetses Island. Close friends and family – many of them royalty themselves – saw the happy couple tie the knot.
Photo by Chris Jackson/Getty Images Europe
Before the wedding, King Constantine and Queen Anne-Marie were seen at Ayios Nikolaos, checking in on last minute preparation.
Constantine told AP Television: “As you know, in all of these situations, even the last minute you are preparing.”
By sunset, the wedding guests began to arrive. Crowds and media gathered outside, though they were kept at distance by security.
As the guests arrived, they stopped to pose for the photographers before heading inside the white monastery.
Prince Nikolaos, age 40, came to his wedding by boat. Tatiana Blatnik meanwhile, came in a horse drawn carriage. Dressed in a simple gown of lace and Grecian style thrown in, the bride was given away by her father, Atilio Brillembourg.
What went on during the ceremony remains unknown, as this was a private wedding for a deposed royal family. Greek voters abolished the monarchy in the 1970s, and the family has been living in exile since the late 60s. Currently, most of them are based in London.
After the wedding, Prince Nikolaos and the now Princess Nikolaos of Greece and Denmark emerged from Ayios Nikolaos, arm in arm and very happy. They waved to the crowds as they got into a carriage that sent them to their reception.
Tatiana, age 29 and an events planner for fashion house Diane von Furstenberg, is known as Princess Nikolaos because she is not a princess in her own right; she earned it by being a prince’s wife.
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