Letizia Ortiz

Letizia Ortiz was a television news anchor who had reported from Ground Zero and from the Iraq war, and became the first Spanish queen consort who was neither aristocratic nor foreign. She was born in Oviedo, the daughter of a journalist and a nurse, took a degree in journalism at the Complutense and a master's in audiovisual reporting, and worked for the Asturian press, for the news agency EFE and for Bloomberg in Mexico before joining Spanish television. She anchored CNN+ and then the main evening bulletin on TVE, and covered the September 11 attacks from New York, the Prestige oil spill and the American invasion of Iraq. She had been married and divorced in a civil ceremony, which was the point most argued over when the engagement to Prince Felipe was announced in November 2003, since a church wedding for a divorced person required that the first marriage had not been sacramental. They married in Madrid in May 2004, ten weeks after the Atocha bombings, and have two daughters, Leonor and Sofia. Felipe became king in June 2014 on the abdication of Juan Carlos I, whose reputation had collapsed over hunting trips and financial investigations, and the couple's public role since has been explicitly one of repairing the monarchy's standing. She works on cancer research, rare diseases, nutrition and mental health, and continues to be covered by the Spanish press in the manner of a public figure rather than a royal one, which is roughly what was predicted. She is the first Spanish queen consort born a commoner in the modern line. Her younger sister Erika died in 2007, which the family asked the press to leave alone and which the press did not. She has been reported to take an unusually direct hand in the drafting of her own speeches. Her elder daughter Leonor is heir to the throne under a constitution that still gives sons precedence, an anomaly no government has yet amended.

• Lived: 1972 CE – ?
• Nationality: Spanish
• Roles: royalty