Tapatios who hobnobbed with Spain’s queen in-waiting while she lived in Guadalajara in the mid-1990s remember her as an honest, intelligent student with a zest for life.
Princess Letizia, who will be elevated to the rank of queen when her husband Felipe takes the throne of Spain on June 18, spent six months in Guadalajara in 1996 as part of her masters’ degree in Communication.
The princess, or Letizia Ortiz as she was then known, lived with a family close to the Universidad de Guadalajara campus where she studied.
Letizia apparently enjoyed a vigorous social life during her stay in the city and worked for a while in the supplements section at the Siglo 21 daily newspaper. She already had some previous journalistic experience with Asturian daily La Nueva España, the ABC national newspaper and the news agency EFE.
During her spell in Guadalajara, Letizia became friends with Cuban artist Waldo Saavedra. She allegedly posed in the nude for the artist and one of the paintings was later used in an album cover by local rock group Mana. (This caused a mini scandal in Spain, and Saavedra subsequently announced that he had done the paintings from photographs.)
After returning to Spain, Letizia worked for the Spanish version of Bloomberg News before moving to CNN.
In 2000, she moved to TVE, Spain’s national broadcaster, where she worked for the news channel 24 Horas. In 2002, she anchored a weekly news report program and later the daily morning news program Telediario Matinal.
In August 2003, a few months before her engagement to Felipe, Prince of Asturias, Letizia was promoted to anchor of the TVE daily evening news program Telediario 2, the most viewed newscast in Spain.
Divorced from a previous marriage, Princess Letizia married the heir apparent to the throne of Spain in May 2004. The couple have two children.