Queen Letizia’s former brother-in-law has claimed he had an affair with her during the early years of her marriage to king Felipe VI, in a bizarre post on X (formerly Twitter), which was later deleted.
Jaime del Burgo, a longtime friend of Letizia who went on to marry her sister, Telma Ortiz, from 2012 to 2014, alleged that he was in a romantic relationship with the queen before she was married in 2004 and at another point after her wedding.
On Sunday, del Burgo shared an image of Letizia on X in which she is visibly pregnant (her daughters were born in 2005 and 2007), claiming that Letizia sent him the photo while they were having an affair with the message: ‘Love. I am wearing your pashmina. It is like feeling you by my side. It looks after me. Protects me. I am counting the hours until we see each other again, love you, get out of here. Yours.’
He later deleted the messages and all the content from his X account, although his profile is still visible. In a link to his website, del Burgo is described as ‘an entrepreneur and private investor living with his wife and daughters in the United Kingdom. He was born in Pamplona, Spain, on 10 July 1970’.
It goes on to say that he is ‘the oldest son of Jaime Ignacio del Burgo, the first democratically elected president in Navarra, and grandson of Jaime del Burgo, historian, scholar, and Spanish National Literature Prize’.
Speculation over Letizia’s relationship with del Burgo also emerged after the 53-year-old businessman was interviewed by the author of a new book about his relationship with the royal.
In Letizia y yo (Letizia and I), by veteran Spanish journalist Jaime Peñafiel, del Burgo claimed that Letizia told him that she loved him as they lay in hammocks by the pool at her and Felipe’s royal residence, La Zarzuela.
According to a report in the Daily Mail, del Burgo said he was going to propose to Letizia but desisted when she told him about her relationship with the future king.
In the book, he is also quoted as saying that Spain’s CNI intelligence agency placed him under surveillance for five years and even broke into his home in Switzerland. Del Burgo said the alleged operation did not achieve its presumed objectives as he had placed everything to do with his relationship with Letizia – ‘photographs, videos, mobile phones, text messages’ – in a bank vault.
The book does not allege that any affair was conducted during Letizia’s marriage to Felipe. On his account on X, however, del Burgo said that the book had not told the whole truth, and he made the claim that he and Letizia had been lovers ‘at the end of 2014’, months after Felipe was proclaimed king. The posts have now been deleted.
Many social media users posted messages of support for Letizia. Carolina Alonso, regional spokeswoman of the left-wing Podemos group in Madrid, said del Burgo’s messages were a ‘sexist attack on her privacy’.
Del Burgo often attracted publicity in the past for complaining about press intrusion when he was married to Letizia’s sister. He also made headlines when he claimed that the public should rise up and ignore lockdown rules during the Covid-19 pandemic.
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