Shortly after celebrating the 18th birthday of their eldest daughter, King Felipe and Queen Letizia are getting ready to mark another moment in history as they undertake a three-day State Visit to Denmark.
The Danish Royal House has published the schedule for the trip, which will begin on Monday, 6th November, at Copenaghen Airport, where the King and Queen will land after a short flight from Madrid and where they will be welcomed by Queen Margrethe, Crown Prince Frederik, Crown Princess Mary, Princess Benedikte and a representation of the Royal Life Guard.
After the traditional welcome ceremony on the square in front of Christian VII Palace at Amalienborg and a meeting between King Felipe and Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen, the day will be concluded by the traditional State Banquet, which will take place at Christiansborg Palace, with the Crown Prince Couple and Princess Benedikte also in attendance.
Day two will be the busiest day, with engagements that will see Crown Prince Frederik and Crown Princess Mary escort King Felipe and Queen Letizia around Copenhagen to various engagements that focus on their common areas of interest: a conference on the future of green energy, the presentation of a 14th-century Spanish book that was rediscovered in 2018 in a Copenhagen University library, a visit to a future women and children hospital, and finally the evening gala offered by King Felipe and Queen Letizia, which will also see a tour of the exhibition “Joaquín Sorolla – Lights in motion.”
Day three will also be the last day; Queen Margrethe will bid farewell to her guests early and will preside over the window pane signing ceremony, a long-standing Danish tradition that dates back more than 160 years. The last ones to do so before the King and Queen of Spain were King Harald and Queen Sonja of Norway, who signed their window pane in June of this year at the end go an official trip to Denmark.
The Crown Prince Couple will then accompany King Felipe and Queen Letizia at the Danish Architectural Centre, where they will take part in a roundtable discussion about sustainable urban development, as well as visit an exhibition that showcases the urban development of Copenhagen since 1947. The Danish capital is celebrating its designation as 2023’s World Capital of Architecture.
Before heading back to Madrid, King Felipe and Queen Letizia will host a reception for Spaniards living in Denmark at Moltke’s Palace.
For both outgoing State Banquets to other monarchies (UK in 2018 and Sweden in 2021), Queen Letizia opted to take her biggest tiara with her, so expectations are high for La Buena to make yet another appearance on foreign soil on Monday night.
Given their many similarities, it is also expected that the Spanish sovereigns and the Danish Crown Princely Couple will have a lot to discuss: not only do they share birth years (both King Felipe and Crown Prince Frederik were born in 1968, and Queen Letizia and Crown Princess Mary are both 1972 babies), they also got married at just a few weeks apart (Crown Prince Frederik and Crown Princess Mary got married on the 14th of May 2004, with then-Prince Felipe marrying Princess Letizia on the 22nd of May). Their children were also born very close to each other: Prince Christian came into the world on the 15th of October 2005, with Princess Leonor following closely on the 31st of October; Princess Isabella was born on the 21st of April 2007, and Infanta Sofía on the 29th.
This also means that both of their older children recently reached adulthood: Prince Christian celebrated with a glittering gala hosted by Queen Margrethe II, while Princess Leonor went with duty first and swore her allegiance to the Constitution and the King on the day before receiving the collar of the Order of Charles III; her party, which took place in the evening, was a private affair, with cameras relegated to the gates outside the Pardo Palace.
Two different ways of living the monarchy and its role in society will meet at the highest level on Monday, with the promise of pomp, ceremony and complicity.
