Queen Letizia of Spain brought a piece of her past to Barcelona on Thursday 15 October, wearing a diamond bracelet that had not been seen in public for more than 20 years. She chose it for the 75th Premio Planeta de Novela, where she and King Felipe VI handed the award to the Chilean novelist Isabel Allende.
The bracelet has been in the Queen’s collection since before her marriage. According to the Spanish magazine HOLA!, its last public appearance was in Copenhagen in May 2004, at an event held on the eve of the wedding of Crown Prince Frederik and Mary Donaldson, now King Frederik and Queen Mary of Denmark. Letizia attended with Felipe, who was then her fiancé.
That trip to Denmark came less than two weeks before her own wedding to Felipe, held in Madrid on 22 May 2004. In the years since, the bracelet stayed out of view while Letizia became Queen and the mother of Princess Leonor and Infanta Sofía.
For the Planeta evening the Queen kept the rest of her look restrained. She wore a black gown by the Spanish designer Sybilla, cut with geometric openings at the neckline and shoulders, and paired it with PDPAOLA’s Pavé Twist Hoops earrings and a statement ring. Her hair was parted to one side and set in loose waves, which left the bracelet as the main point of sparkle.
The ceremony also gave the King a rare speaking role. Felipe does not usually address the Planeta audience, but he explained that he had made an exception for what he called an “important anniversary”. He pointed to a record number of entries for this year’s edition and offered congratulations to Grupo Planeta, the publisher behind the prize, on its 75 years. Translated from Spanish, he also praised fiction for giving readers “the freedom to imagine other lives”.
The prize, often described as the world’s most lucrative award for an unpublished novel, went to Allende, who came on stage to receive it from the King and Queen.
