Queen Letizia during her congratulatory video for The Weekly Report.
Any royalist and almost every entertainment lover can afford to envy the British royal family’s sense of the scene. Not only are they the masters of pomp and circumstance, they also know how to walk down to earth, beginning with their late head of family. His Graceful Majesty could wink at 007 from the opening of the London Olympics, or sip tea with Paddington Bear and inspire worldwide sympathy.
Our royal family seems only to emulate the British in the scandals that surround them. This weekend, however, was an exception. We saw a great play with Queen Letizia commemorating the 50th anniversary of the weekly report. In it she recalls her brief professional stint on the show and one of the reports that most impressed her as a young viewer, that of the girl Omayra, whose impending death in 1985 made the blood of all viewers run cold.
It makes more monarchists remember the Queen reflecting on poor Omayra’s agony than any other communication strategy. There are few social glues like television, and she knows it. It also turned out that whoever held back. The fact that Queen Letizia was a TV presenter will be considered an improvised anecdote within 20 years, much like the fact that Silvia of Sweden was an interpreter and host at the Munich Olympics. Likeable filler in biographies. But we’re still the vast majority of us who’ve seen her on the other side of the screen, visiting the tar-plagued Costa de la Muerte or explaining to us the switch from pesetas to euros. He did it because he wanted to, it just wasn’t there, but he lost because he had to give up work for love. She will be queen, but today she could present the weekly report.
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