As British Royals deal with the race row reignited after King Charles and the Princess of Wales were named in the Dutch version of Omid Scobie’s new book Endgame, not to be outdone, the Royal Family in Spain is now also playing out a drama of its own about Queen Leticia’s former love life.
Jaime del Burgo, Letizia’s ‘resurrected’ ex-brother-in-law, claims the pair were romantically involved, even after she married King Felipe.
The 53-year-old, who is currently based in the UK, recently contributed to a tell-all book about Queen Letizia, “Letizia & I,” by journalist Jaime Peñafiel, in which he claimed that he had a relationship with the 51-year-old royal before he married her sister, Telma Ortiz, 50.
In the book, Del Burgo also claimed that the two were still romantically involved after Letizia tied the knot with King Felipe, 55, in 2004.
According to the book’s author, the relationship between Jaime del Burgo and the young Letizia Ortiz began in 2000 in Venice, and went through, he explains, “four stages.”
She was single and very much established as a successful journalist on Spanish Television, but before knowing that she was in a relationship with Prince Felipe de Borbón, he wanted to marry her.
He tells Peñafiel that they met for dinner in the garden of the Ritz hotel in Madrid, where he had planned to give her a ring and to propose to her. But before he could do so, she confessed to him that she had met a man who would change her life, Felipe de Borbón. However, in a social media post last weekend the book goes on to say that the ‘affair’ extended into the years following her marriage to the monarch.
As “proof” to support his claim, in a since-deleted post on X, formerly known as Twitter, he shared a selfie that Letizia took in a bathroom mirror. The photo was not dated.
In the selfie, Letizia is wearing a black pashmina, which Jaime claims belonged to him. He claims that the queen sent him a message with the selfie that read, “Love. I wear your pashmina. It’s like feeling you by my side. It takes care of me. It protects me. I count the hours until we see each other again. Love you.”
Although he later deleted the tweet, it is a textbook revenge strategy used on such networks, with which everyone wonders if it is true, a lie, or even if his profile has been hacked.
Del Burgo has not yet spoken out following the commotion caused by his tweet but, be that as it may, he quickly removed all content from his social networks. On X (formerly Twitter) you can now only read “Jaime del Burgo has not posted.”