The Spanish Royal Family is set to start their annual summer time at the Balearic Island this week. Every year in the last week of July, King Felipe VI and Queen Letizia of Spain along with their daughters Princess Leonor and Infanta Sofia head to Balearic Island where they spend August visiting various local tourist and historical attractions before heading for a private summer break.
On Monday King Felipe VI will receive the participants of the fifteenth plenary session of the Euro-Latin American Parliamentary Assembly. Queen Letizia will join her husband on Tuesday for the Royal Collection Gallery opening at the Royal Palace in Madrid. That would be both Felipe and Letizia’s last official engagement in Madrid this month.
King Felipe will be heading to Palma shortly after that as he has engagements scheduled on Thursday while it has been reported that Queen Letizia and their both daughters will arrive later in the week ahead of Queen Letizia’s appearance at the Closing Gala of the 13th “Atlántida Mallorca Film Fest”.
It seems the Family time in Palma will be cut short this year as Princess Leonor will be heading for her first year of Military training at the General Military Academy in Zaragoza on August 17. It was announced earlier this year that just like her father, The Princess of Asturias will be going for 3 years long Military training with all forms of armed forces from August 2023.
Infanta Sofia will be arriving at UWC Atlantic College in Wales on August 29th to begin International Beccaulrate. Her elder sister Princess Leonor graduated from the same college in May this year.
Now a bit about the Spanish Royal Family’s summer residence
The Marivent Palace is the summer residence of the Spanish Royal Family in Mallorca. The Palace was built between 1923-1925 and is located in the tourist area of Cala Mayor in Palma de Mallorca, Spain. The official residence is the Royal Palace of La Almudaina where King Felipe VI and Queen Letizia will be holding an annual evening reception for the Balearic island authorities and representatives in August.
The Marivent Palace was commissioned by a Greek-Egyptian painter and art collector, Juan de Saridakis, and designed by architect Guillem Forteza. Juan made a fortune while working as an engineer in Chilean mines. He fell in love with the natural beauty of Mallorca and ended up building a Castle that became a historical monument. Marivent means ‘sea and wind’ in Majorcan, so its name honours the most abundant elements found in the area. Built on a gorgeous cliff, the Palace covers 3300 sq. Meters area and features many lush gardens and Pine groves.
After his death in 1963, his wife, Anunciación Marconi, donated the Palace to the Balearic Government with a provision that it will remain open to the public, free of cost, dedicated to her husband’s collection. But in 1973, the building was handed over to the Prince and Princess of Spain, Juan Carlos and Sofia and was renamed Marivent Palace. The decision to hand over to the Royal Family was opposed by the Saridakis family and the matter was taken to the Court. Since the 1970s the Palace remained the summer residence of the Spanish Royal Family.
In 1988, the Supreme Court ruled that the 1,300 works of art, the 2,000 volumes in the library and the hundred valuable pieces of furniture inside the Marivent Palace, that were donated with the Palace to the Balearic Island government, will be returned to the legitimate heirs of Juan de Saridakis. The Palace is officially owned by Balearic Island Government instead of being part of Crown Estates. A Part of the gardens is open to the public throughout the year.
The Palace has remained Queen Sofia’s the most favourite royal residence since her marriage. The then Prince and Princess of Wales, Charles and Diana, are among the famous guests who had stayed at the Palace for a vacation in the 1980s. We have seen the Palace as the backdrop of many Spanish royal family pictures and portraits during Easter and summer.
