King Felipe and Queen Letizia undertook their first trip outside of Spain in 2022 for a one-day official visit to Austria.
The royal couple, who travelled with Spanish Culture and Sports Minister Miquel Iceta, landed at Vienna-Schwechat Airport on Monday, 31 January. They were welcomed by the Austrian Foreign Minister and the Spanish Ambassadors in Austria.
Next, the convoy made its way towards Hofburg Imperial Palace, where Their Majesties were welcomed by Austrian President Alexander Van Der Bellen and his wife, Doris Schmidauer.
After the greetings, the official welcoming ceremony began with the playing of the two national anthems before King Felipe and President Van Der Bellen reviewed the troops. It was then time for the two delegations to be introduced, before journalists were granted a photo opportunity in front of the Bellaria-Tor portal.
Behind closed doors, King Felipe and President Van Der Bellen, together with their respective delegations, held a meeting, the contents of which have not been made public. Meanwhile, Queen Letizia and First Lady Schmidauer held a separate encounter “on common work areas,” according to the Spanish Royal Household.
Following these meetings, the President and First Lady hosted a lunch for the royal couple.
In the afternoon, the four arrived at Albertina Square to depose a floral offer at the feet of the monument for the victims of the Mauthausen concentration camp, before everyone observed a minute of silence in memory of those who lost their life to national socialism. This comes only a few days after the world stopped to remember the horrors of the Holocaust on 27 January.
To conclude their short trip, the King and Queen opened the exhibition “Dali and Freud. An obsession” at Vienna’s Belvedere Museum. The show centres around the influence of Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalysis principles in Salvador Dali’s art.
Despite this being the first official visit for the King and Queen to Austria, it is not the first time Queen Letizia has travelled there since Felipe was sworn in as King. In fact, Austria was the first place outside of Spain that she visited on a solo trip after she became Queen Consort, giving everyone a small sampling of her German-speaking abilities.
Spain and Austria hold excellent diplomatic and economic relations; both are members of the European Union and share cultural and political values that make them great allies.
