Madrid
Crown Prince Felipe of Spain married a former TV anchorwoman, Letizia Ortiz, last week, making her the first Spanish commoner to be in line to be queen. Ortiz, 31, is a divorcée in an overwhelmingly Roman Catholic country, but polls showed that the public didn’t mind. After a lavish ceremony, estimated to have cost $24 million, tens of thousands of Spaniards lined the streets to cheer the newlyweds. It was the first royal wedding in Spain since 1906. The prince’s father, King Juan Carlos, and grandfather, Juan de Borbon, married abroad while in exile, during the dictatorship of Gen. Francisco Franco. Ortiz’s father, journalist Jesus Ortiz, assured the nation that the new princess was a “perfectionist” with “her head well screwed on.”
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