Alleged Affair Detonates Wild Spanish Royal Family Conspiracy Theory

Even by the salacious standards of the Spanish royal family, a veritable gossip earthquake was set off earlier this month when a former boyfriend of Queen Letizia of Spain claimed that he had conducted a long-running affair with her—after she had married King Felipe.

The claim has kicked off a firestorm that now includes a wild conspiracy theory featuring terrorists, left-wing plots, and allegations of false-flag affair accusations.

The unambiguous original claim was made by Letizia’s former boyfriend, Jaime del Burgo. He dated her before she became engaged to King Felipe (then Crown Prince) and was long considered a close friend of the couple, but he has now claimed their romantic relationship continued after her marriage to Felipe, and even while she was pregnant (the royal couple have two children).

Complicating matters, del Burgo later married and subsequently divorced Letizia’s sister, Telma. He strongly hinted at the alleged affair in a book entitled Letizia y Yo (Letizia and I), which saw del Burgo claim Letizia had told him that she loved him during trysts in hammocks at the royal palace, La Zarzuela, and that Spain’s secret police kept him under surveillance for five years.

In case of any doubt, he then took to X to spell out the allegations in detail.

His posts included a now-famous selfie he says a pregnant Letizia sent to him, accompanied by a billet doux, expressing her love for him through the extended metaphor of a scarf, which he claims said: “Love. I am wearing your pashmina. It is like feeling you by my side. It looks after me. Protects me. I am counting the hours until we see each other again, love you, get out of here. Yours.”

He said in another post that they tried to figure out if Letizia could get divorced and they could have a child via a surrogate in Los Angeles. He later deleted the messages and his X account.

Queen Letizia’s Ex Brother-in-Law Says They Had an Affair‘NEVER LEAVE ME’

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But what seemed, prima facie, to be just a sex scandal, albeit one ripped from the script of a particularly ambitious telenovela, acquired a political dimension after del Burgo then reactivated his X account with just a single reposted Spanish message that read, per Google Translate: “Jaime Del Burgo is a patriot who has had to face ETA terrorism since he was a child. And he has reacted to avoid the tragedy designed by Sánchez, ETA, coup plotters and Letizia, who has been the Head of State since she maneuvered to take King Juan Carlos into exile.”

The post refers to the fact that del Burgo—who now lives in London— is the son of a prominent Spanish politician who opposed Basque separatism and was among those targeted by the ETA terror group in a campaign of violence that killed over 800 people.

It also refers to the deposing of the old king, Juan Carlos, who was forced to abdicate in 2014, when an unfortunate injury on an ill-advised elephant-hunting trip caused allegations of eye-watering financial corruption to surface.

It was presented at the time as a noble, selfless and voluntary decision on the part of the king. The truth is that it was anything but.

Bradley Hope, a writer and journalist whose production company, Brazen, produced a jaw-dropping eight-part podcast entitled Corinna and the King about Juan Carlos’ fall, told The Daily Beast: “With any royal family, there’s a strong sense of self-preservation. Juan Carlos put the royal family in peril. So they decided he had to leave; it was something he had to agree to because nobody was on his side. They did what they had to do, as the alternative was to go down in flames.”

Abdication wasn’t enough to silence his critics, however, and eventually he left the country for exile in Abu Dhabi in 2020, amidst a welter of lawsuits, including one from his former girlfriend, Corinna zu Sayn-Wittgenstein-Sayn.

She alleged that Juan Carlos gave her €65 million ($68.2 million) as a gift but said she was then harassed by Juan Carlos or people acting on his behalf when she would not give him access to it. The harassment, her lawyers said, included a book alleging Princess Diana was killed by British intelligence being left in her Swiss apartment while she was out, gunshots being fired at CCTV cameras outside her home and her mobile phone being monitored.

Juan Carlos’s disgrace was an extraordinary moment in Spain’s recent history, because there was a time when he could do no wrong. He was revered as a key figure in delivering Spain from the legacy of the dictator General Francisco Franco. Although it was Franco who reinstated the monarchy and appointed Don Juan Carlos king, a fact republicans say, which militates against the casa real’s legitimacy. He also helped stop a 1985 coup attempt in its tracks by rallying the country against it.

A familiarity with Spanish conspiracy theories helps understand the rest of del Burgo’s dense post. Although ETA officially disbanded in 2018, there have been persistent theories that Pedro Sánchez, the left-wing prime minister, is an ETA sympathizer, and that he colluded with ETA politicians to force Juan Carlos into exile. The left-wingers and separatists, so the theory alluded to in del Burgo’s post goes, struck a deal to put Felipe and Letizia in power believing they would be weaker than the legendary Juan Carlos.

Del Burgo’s post has now in turn led to mainstream claims that del Burgo made the allegations of an affair in an effort to destabilize Felipe and Letizia’s reign—at the behest of Juan Carlos, who may now perhaps be considering trying to reverse his decision to go into exile, having seen off many of the lawsuits against him, including Corinna’s harassment case, which was thrown out by a London court in October. Needless to say, Felipe and Letizia do not want the old king back home in anything other than a coffin.

Federico Jiménez Losantos, a popular radio journalist recently told his audience: “It’s the ‘nth’ campaign orchestrated against Felipe VI… It is Juan Carlos’s circles who are stirring it up.” And Pilar Eyre, a veteran royal reporter, told the Telegraph: “It is true that there is a campaign to smear Felipe’s reign stemming from the very ranks of the monarchy.”

As in any earthquake, the Spanish royal family would do well to pay attention to aftershocks in the weeks ahead.