MADRID LETTER: On Saturday, after many false starts with unsuitable young girls, 36-year-old Prince Felipe, the Prince of Asturias, will marry the woman of his choice, writes Jane Walker.
Before last November, when the surprise engagement was announced, the name of Letizia Ortiz was only familiar to viewers of TVE, the Spanish state television, where the 31-year-old journalist read the news and covered stories such as the World Trade Centre bombing and the deployment of Spanish troops in Iraq. The only known photograph of them together was of the prince shaking hands with a group of journalists in Asturias a month earlier.
For years the prince has been under pressure to marry and produce an heir. and his name has been linked with many candidates for future Queen of Spain, some suitable and some not so suitable. However, when he made his choice, it horrified dyed-in-the- wool traditionalists. Miss Ortiz is a divorcee, and certainly not an aristocrat. Her parents are also divorced. Her father is a radio producer, her mother a nurse and union official, and one of her grandparents was a Madrid taxi driver.
Preparations have been underway for weeks to prepare the city for the big day and to entertain the 1,500 official guests including kings, queens, princes and presidents from around the world, including Ireland.
King Juan Carlos and Queen Sofia will host a pre-wedding banquet on Friday in the Pardo Palace, the former residence of General Franco, and on Saturday the guests will attend the wedding in the Almudena Cathedral and the reception in the Royal Palace.
On Monday night 1,000 light canons were switched on, illuminating many of Madrid's public buildings, fountains and monuments in a garish display of red, yellow and blue light.
Royal weddings are notorious for tasteless and sugary sentimentality, but the 1.5 million watts of multi-coloured Madrid lights must take the prize for lack of taste. Shop windows are adorned with photos of the couple, huge canvases with reproductions of Goya paintings cover scaffoldings of building sites and tens of thousands of flowers have been planted along the possible routes - although many of them were dug up and stolen as fast as the gardeners put them in.
Madrid has not seen a full scale royal wedding for nearly a century, when Prince Felipe's great grandfather, King Alfonso XIII, married Victoria Eugenia of Battenburg in 1906 - although no one would like to see this as a precedent. And even 98 years ago terrorism was a threat in the Spanish capital. An Anarchist's bomb was thrown at their carriage killing over 20 people, and the new Queen Ena arrived at the reception with her gown splattered in blood. Even their reign was troubled and they were forced into exile in 1931 shortly before the Spanish Civil War.
Prince Felipe's grandfather married in Rome in 1935, and the present King Juan Carlos married Queen Sofia of Greece in Athens in 1962, 13 years before the restoration of the monarchy.
The shadow of terrorism still hangs over this week's wedding, and what was planned as an elaborate week of festivities has been curtailed in the aftermath of the March 11th bomb massacre. Many of the events on the programme have been cut back as a sign of respect for the 191 people who died that morning and the money donated to a fund for a monument for the victims.
Police are taking no chances for next Saturday and security is tight. Spain has temporarily withdrawn from the Schengen Agreement, and all arrivals must show their passports and pass through strict searches of their vehicles and luggage. The underground Metro stations and many of the roads in the city centre will be closed off, and the identity papers of residents living in buildings in the vicinity closely checked. The exact route from the cathedral to the Basilica of Our Lady of Atocha, where the new Princess of Asturias will follow a Spanish royal tradition and leave her bouquet, will not be known until the last minute. The Phantom IV Rolls Royce convertible, in which the couple will drive through the streets, has been transformed into a kind of 'Popemobile', with a bullet proof glass roof covering the vintage vehicle.
But the couple will almost certainly make a brief halt in the square outside Atocha Station where 191 olive and cypress trees have been planted in memory of those who died.