The current Spain and the Spain of the coming years coexist in Letters to a queen, a collective book that brings together the letters that 35 authors, from various fields and sensibilities (both monarchical, republican and nationalist), have written to Princess Leonor. This work of Zenda, sponsored by Iberdrolais a non-venal edition that can be downloaded for free on this page.
Below we reproduce the letter written by Edu Galán, which is titled “To Berta, my queen”.
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He messed me up again. Yes, that her. Your godfather. Arthur. He asks me to write a letter to the future queen of Spain where I can tell her, poor thing, about my concerns. What eggs. How do I tell him that, just like that, the first concern that comes to mind is you? I carry you, a baby just over a year old, with too much responsibility. You do not have a formed brain, nor a settled language, nor a spatial conception of the world, nor all your molars in order! You don’t even have sphincter control. By the way, it would never have occurred to me that I was going to spend years and years cleaning your pee at three in the morning.
I don’t know, Berta, this man always does the same thing to me. I’ll tell you more: the girl in question that I should write to is called Leonor. She is eighteen years old and she will be queen at some point. She reigns not like the ones in the stories, with pink outfits and cheesy voices. She will be a queen of parliamentary monarchy with her actions, her Christmas statements or her permanent public display. She is a queen registered in the BOE. This last one is going to be difficult for me to understand.
“I hope you normalize an unusual fact, at least in my generation and previous ones: contemplating a queen, a head of state, a woman with true power“
I confess to you: sometimes I think about her because, because of you, my time has increased. It hasn’t gotten longer—I’m going to clap when I have to—but it’s gotten bigger: I’ve never spent so many hours ruminating about the future. Plus, I spend many nights imagining how old you will be the last time I see you. I would like you to be over forty, but God knows. This noise forces me to think about those who will accompany you on your life journey: your family, your friends, your partners, your society. My forty-fourth birthday—I turn it today, you know—is sentimentally linked to Leonor’s father. His name is Felipe and, since he is king, they number him. He has had the sixth and he comes from a long historical lineage that I hope one day we will learn together. He and I are twelve years apart; You and his daughter Leonor are eighteen. Just as friends remain at the age when you met them, I continue to call Felipe VI Prince of Asturias. I have agreed with him, disagreed, and fiercely criticized him: the king has awakened more feelings in me than one of those Mickey movies we see on Disney+. Felipe shapes my time as Leonor will shape yours. I hope you normalize an unusual fact, at least in my generation and previous ones: contemplating a queen, a head of state, a woman with true power. I’m very happy about the last thing because, deep down, I hope this encourages you and that one day you have more power than her. You would be a kind of Intergalactic Empress with dictatorial touches but with a lot of affection for her father, the Emperor Emeritus.
“I hope Leonor treats herself, from time to time, to some of the nonsense typical of your age.“
Of course, at some point, as I did before, you will have to think seriously about the monarchy and decide your position: monarchist, temperate or anti—what is known as republican. I hope that if, after the necessary historical and political readings, you decide on the latter, you are not irrational. On a human level, assuming the role of a queen scares me—that awareness of too many eyes from such a young age—and I can even understand her parents’ fear. Her relationship with the citizens does not go in two directions, but in one. Many Spaniards will feel that she is theirs, even her own, and many others will feel that she is alien, even an intruder, even without Leonor knowing them. This, fortunately, will never happen to you at that level. But understand, Berta, that Spain moves in this emotional balance: a democratic, complex society, which Leonor will have to face, at least in public, putting on a good face. She must go back to the hypervigilance of her intimate life, to a superhuman commitment or to the nonsense of reading that she “symbolizes the Spanish nation” or “she represents our country.”
With those bombastic phrases they partly tell her the truth but I hope that, for her sake, she remembers that she was a girl like you are now, darling. I hope Leonor treats herself, from time to time, to some of the absurdities typical of your age: laughing or crying at the wrong time, imagining impossible territories or remembering, during one of her innumerable commitments – a reception for the second undersecretaries of municipal collection of belongings, for example—, what the Italian actor Marcello Mastroianni wrote in his memoirs. «I don’t want to sound like a snob, but I think the term the French use is very accurate: to say interpret, they say jouer, which in Italian would be giocare (play)”. That is to say: that Leonor allows herself to play from time to time, as you should be doing now in kindergarten.
“There are more solutions in the arts than in all the newspapers of the year“
Apart from the usual ones—health and safety—I’ll tell you another of my fears, Berta: that you’ll feel alone. If your loneliness already seems unbearable to me, I don’t want to imagine how much a queen can monopolize. Not even her family or her teachers will be able to give her an answer. I hate to give advice, Berta, but I have to play a father: to avoid the loneliness of being a strange child, cinema, music, literature or history helped me. There I found comfort where others, including your grandparents, could not give me. In that place I believe that both you and Leonor will have manuals for your personal relationships and she in particular for her institutional relationships or the understanding of the various scenarios through which this country will move. There are more solutions in the arts than in all the newspapers of the year.
Once, on a program by Buenafuente, a comedian friend of Dad’s, I said in public something that I have been defending for a long time in private: “The best thing about you is always others.” The rest: some wonderful, some vile, some intelligent, some idiots, some exceptional, some ordinary. Berta—and I would advise the same thing to Leonor—: she tries to listen to everyone, especially those who don’t think like you; always hang out with smarter and better people; Discern who wants to use you – I don’t know why, I think Leonor will smell them from a distance – and study carefully, in life and in fiction, the behaviors of others, even those who point out what not to do.
Well, I love you very much, my macaca.
Let’s see if I can think of something for your godfather’s order.
Madrid, March 12, 2024.
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Letters to a queen It is the eighth collaboration between our literary website and Iberdrola, after the great reception of the previous volumes: Under two flags (2018), Men (and some women) (2019), Heroines (2020), 2030 (2021), Stories from the road (2022), Europe, autumn or spring? (2023) and The lights of memory (2023).
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