This Tuesday, King Felipe and Letizia sent the traditional Christmas greeting. The photograph chosen for the Christmas of the Kings and their daughters is an image taken from last October 31, Princess Leonor’s birthday and the day she swore the Constitution before the Cortes Generales. In the image, Felipe VI, Queen Letizia, the Princess and Infanta Sofía pose in the gallery of the Royal Palace, just before the meal held after the swearing-in ceremony in Congress.
For their part, the emeritus kings, Juan Carlos and Sofía, continue to sign together one of the two institutional Christmases that Zarzuela made public this Tuesday. On this occasion the chosen painting was Adoration of the Shepherds by Bartolomé Esteban Murillo. The congratulations, in addition to people belonging to their family or private circle, are physically sent to the people, groups or entities that have had contact with the royal family during the year and are also posted on the website www.casareal.es and on the Twitter account @CasaReal.
Last year, the photo chosen for the congratulations of the Kings and their daughters was one in which only Princess Leonor and Infanta Sofía appeared in an image captured just a few days before in the garden of the Zarzuela palace, after the Princess of Asturias will arrive in Madrid to spend the Christmas holidays. Leonor was then studying the second year of the International Baccalaureate at the Atlantic College in Wales. To congratulate King Juan Carlos and Sofía, the reproduction of a Birth scene was chosen, the original painting of which is in the monastery of El Escorial.
The previous year, 2021, the congratulations of the Kings and their daughters, Princess Leonor and Infanta Sofía, were illustrated with a photo of the four in the gardens of their residence in La Zarzuela, taking advantage of the presence of Princess Leonor in Spain to attend the Princess of Asturias awards ceremony. In the case of Kings Juan Carlos and Sofia, the reproduction of a nativity scene belonging to the Neapolitan nativity scene that is installed in the Royal Palace with figures from the 18th century that belong to National Heritage was included.
Since King Felipe’s proclamation in 2014, Zarzuela has made the two congratulations public every year. In that of the Kings and their daughters a photo has always been used, while in that of the emeritus kings, from 2014 to 2017, a Christmas-themed painting was used; In 2018, a photo of Juan Carlos and Sofía taken on the 80th birthday of the King’s mother was chosen, and in 2019, one of the couple captured in Sanxenxo (A Coruña) the previous summer. At Christmas 2020, the first since King Juan Carlos left Spain in August 2020, a religious image was chosen, which reproduced a Christmas altarpiece and in 2021, the aforementioned reproduction of the Neapolitan nativity scene.
