On August 4, 1973, the then princes of Spain, Juan Carlos and Sofia, accompanied by their children, Elena, Cristina and Felip, who were then 9, 8 and 5 years old, entered the Marivent Palace for the first time . Fifty years later, the site is still the official summer residence of the royal family, but the time when it was also the scene of family gatherings and meetings of previous kings with invited personalities is long gone. from all over the world.

“I was very small, I was five years old, but I have very beautiful memories”, said the King on Monday during his visit to the Alfabia gardens when he was asked about that distant summer of 1973: “Time passes very quickly”. And so quickly, especially if you compare those summers in which the kings Juan Carlos and Sofia, as it was said at the time, “moved their residence from the Zarzuela to Marivent”, where, including some escapades of the now emeritus, they spent more than a month in Mallorca. A time when what is also known as “summer diplomacy” was practiced, with invitations to heads of state, personalities, some royal cousins ??and which also, at the end of the eighties, gave rise to a court of millionaires attracted by the light, the sea and the blue blood.

Marivent will forever be linked, not only to the previous formation of the royal family, but to the best summer images of the more or less happy years of Charles and Diana, then Princes of Wales. His passage through Mallorca, with excursions on the Fortuna, put an end to the distance between the Spanish and English families after a mess with Gibraltar, and the consequent anger between the Spanish and British governments, prevented the presence of Joan Carles and Sofia in the Charles and Diana’s wedding.

Joan Carles, Sofia and their children began to spend the summer in Mallorca at the suggestion of Nicolás de Cotoner, Marquis of Mondéjar, Mallorcan by birth, then head of the House of the Prince and later of the House of the King. The first years were settled in the Victoria apartments, located on the Passeig Marítim. Mondéjar, who, like so many others living under Franco, was already looking after the future of Joan Carles, saw clearly that he had to give the then young prince his own life and scenes, far from the Meirás manor, and plotted with whom he should go scheming so that the Marivent palace, a residence that the heirs of the painter Joan Saridakis had ceded to the then Diputació de les Balears to be turned into a museum, was ceded for use in the summer to the then princes. Three years later, Joan Carles and Sofia were already kings of and in Marivent.

It was a compound, on the outskirts of Palma and next to the Porto Pi naval base, with a main residence, service outbuildings and a plot of land that opened onto the sea, where services were added over the years belonging to the residence of the Head of State and, later, according to the family needs of the infants Elena and Cristina, and the then prince. Marivent saw the current King and his sisters grow up, who enjoyed the Palmesan night and excursions to the sea. Estiu, Marivent and the royal family were, until the arrival of the 21st century, an indivisible trio.

And with the passage of time came the marital crisis of the Dukes of Lugo, the fall of the Dukes of Palma, the private holidays of Felipe and Letícia far from Palma and, most importantly, the deterioration of the image of King Juan Carlos that did not go back nor in the summer despite his triumphs in regattas and the growth of his visibility. Marivent stopped receiving famous guests, except for a courtesy visit from Michelle Obama in 2010 and little else.

Since 2014, after the proclamation of the King, Marivent is no longer Marivent, it is now, in addition to Queen Sofia’s refuge, the place where Kings Felipe and Letícia spend a few days of official holidays as a prelude to their private vacations, almost always away from the island. Meanwhile, some political groups and part of the Balearic society have rescued an old claim so that fifty years later Saridakis’ wish is fulfilled and Marivent is opened to the public as a museum. Actually it already is.