Book on Felipe VI's ex-boyfriends leaves Spain's royal household silent

Felipe VI's ex-boyfriends: Zarzuela answers with silence and a full diary

There is one image that sums up the episode: Felipe VI in Mallorca, in a floral swimsuit, oblivious to a publishing firestorm that has spent weeks dissecting his private life. The book is titled «Los novios de Felipe VI» (Felipe VI's Boyfriends), written by journalist Joaquín Abad, and published reports attribute to its pages accounts of relationships that no one has confirmed. Among the names circulating are Miguel Bosé and Alejandro Sanz. None of it has been substantiated. The Royal Household has not engaged with the claims.

From Miguel Bosé to Alejandro Sanz: what the book says and what no one can prove

The volume reaches the market as a publishing commodity before anything else. What can be verified is who wrote it and when it came out; what is attributed to its pages has not passed any independent test. One camp argues the book rests on unnamed sources and episodes impossible to check. The other argues that the institution's opacity is precisely what fuels this kind of publication. Neither side has produced a single new fact.

Silence as an answer: the Zarzuela method

The official response has been limited to a diary packed with engagements and zero statements. It is nothing new. In the language of the Crown, sustained silence backed by institutional work works as an official communiqué. The strategy has a cost: it gives up the narrative, but also the temptation to fight back. And it leaves the field open to anyone who wants to tell it all, with or without evidence.

The succession: why the male still comes before the female

The noise soon shifted to the question of succession. Article 57 of the Spanish Constitution orders preference by line, degree, sens and age, with males ahead of females in the same degree. It is an anomaly that clashes with the rest of the constitutional text and that no one has touched. Leonor is the heir because she is the eldest daughter, not because of her sens.

The detail that unsettles

The public conversation soon jumped from private life to historical comparison. Charles I of Spain keeps appearing as the idealized mirror image of the current monarch: strong jaw, military bearing, and a reign still debated as either a heroic antiestéticat or a fiscal ruin. Against that, a floral swimsuit in Mallorca. And in the end, what most unsettled part of the public was not the book: it was a pin. The Agenda 2030 pin, and the Queen's membership in the Order of the Garter, bothered people more than any chapter. The King's private life turned out to be the least of it.