Yesimeon IIking of the Bulgarians, was six years old when he ascended the throne in 1943, upon the death of his father Boris III. At just nine, she left Sofia for Istanbul, after the communists took power in her country and a plebiscite was organized in which 92 percent of the population opted for the Republic. Then came Egypt and, finally, Spain, where the Bulgarian royal family settled with the aim of rebuilding. Simeón was educated at the French Lyceum in Madrid and fell in love with the Madrid woman Margarita Gómez Acebo y Cejuelagranddaughter of the Marquises of Cortina, whom he married in Lausanne in January 1962.
Together they formed a fairly well-matched marriage and had five children (Kardam, Kyril, Kubrat, Kalina and Konstantin-Assen) who in posh circles were called the Ks, since their names began with that letter. The five children of the last tsar of Bulgaria were raised in Madridalong with those of Kings Juan Carlos and Sofía, good friends of the family. According to Ramón Pérez-Maura in his book ‘Simeón de Bulgaria. The Possible King’, Kardam, Kyril, Kubrat, Kalina and Konstantin-Assen “received a strict training, closely marked by their father, who wanted to make them successful professionals even if it was at the cost of not filling their heads with dynastic aspirations “.
Kardam, the firstborn, became an economist. Kyril, prince of Preslav, became a high-level financier. Kubrat is today a renowned surgeon and Konstantin, godfather of Infanta Sofía, works at Barclays. For its part, Kalina from Bulgaria preferred to dedicate herself to furniture restoration and the world of antiques. “Her friends say that her extravagances are due to her great shyness,” journalist Pepa Rebollo wrote about her. “Kalina has gone through all the looks imaginable: shaved hair, punk, hippie… and various cosmetic operations that do not seem to have given her good results. She is the most Bulgarian of all the siblings, probably because it has been instilled in her. her father since she was a child.
Link with Letizia
Proof of the princess’s Bulgarian spirit is that she announced in the city of Sofia her official engagement with the Spanish Kitin Muñoz, a globe-trotting sailor whom he apparently met in January 2000 at the Casa de América in Madrid. “There I presented my documentary film ‘Expedicion Mata-Rangi’, to which the prince of Asturias attended to give me their support,” Kitín himself said in an interview with the journalistto Juanra Lopez. “The next day, I was already preparing to return to Easter Island, but they called me at the last minute for a dinner. At that dinner I met Kalina: I canceled the trip to Easter.”
In addition to crossing the Pacific Ocean aboard a raft made of reeds in order to emulate the indigenous peoples of the world, Kitín is known for having been Queen Letizia’s boyfriend. According to Pilar Eyre, the love affair took place in 2011, when she worked at CNN+ and had just broken up with journalist David Tejera. “It was a free romance that lasted two months,” the journalist wrote, “until Letizia met Felipe, and Kitín met Kalina,” whom he married in the Tsarska Bistritsa palace, high in the mountains of Rila, in the fall of 2002, and with whom he still makes up one of the most solid unions on the scene today.
After living several years in Morocco, where the king Mohamed VI appointed the Spanish Honorary Consul of the African country, the lovebirds settled in Bulgaria, where today they reside in a house on the Vitosha mountain in Boyana, Sofia. It was in 2007 when they welcomed their son, Simeon Hassan, who has grown up close to his paternal grandfather, who not only ended up returning to his native country, but in 2001 he was democratically elected to lead the republic – although in 2009 he resigned. his responsibilities in his liberal party, the Simeon II National Movement.
Always in shape
In 2022, the Bulgarian princess gave an interview to talk about her current life and celebrate her two decades of marriage. “It has been very emotional for us and for my father, King Simeon, to celebrate our twentieth anniversary in the chapel of the Vrana palace,” he noted. “I would have loved for my brothers to be there, they were all invited, but they could not attend. It has been twenty years of happiness. Everything has been good, except the sad passing of my dear brother Kardam [en 2015, debido a las secuelas que dejó en él un accidente de tráfico sufrido varios años antes]”.
In another report it was commented that Kalina and her husband have been immersed in preparations for an international expedition to Antarctica for some time.. “[Kalina] She is very tough, physically and mentally,” Kitín commented to argue why he considered his wife would have been a good Green Beret like him. “She resists pain very well: during my last reed raft expedition, along the African coast of Morocco , Mauritania, Senegal and Cape Verde, suffered an infection in her teeth and nose, and resisted the pain so much that in the end she had to be evacuated on the high seas and undergo emergency surgery.
Kalina herself, whose slim and muscular body is making headlines in the press these days, has recognized that It is usually used thoroughly to stay in shape. “I dedicate myself to training with weight loads and to the health of the body, I am an athlete,” she explained in a recent interview, who in her day was a professional horsewoman. “I have competed for 15 years in Morocco in national and international championships, representing Bulgaria. The first time I saw the Bulgarian flag in a competition, because I was the only Bulgarian rider, it filled me with pride.”
