King Felipe of Spain has been embroiled in a royal scandal as his brother-in-law admitted to an affair with a colleague.
Iñaki Urdangarín has been married to Infanta Cristina, 56, the youngest of the king’s two sisters, since 1997.
This morning he admitted to having an affair as he arrived at work this morning at a law firm in Vitoria.
It comes as he was pictured holding hands with Ainhoa Armentia, 43, on a beach in the south of France.
Mr Urdangarin, a former handball player for Spain’s national team, said: “These things happen…it is a difficulty that we will manage with the utmost tranquillity and together as we have always done.”
Sources told Hola!, the sister publication of Hello!, his wife ‘already knew’ about her husband’s relationship and that the family did not spend Christmas together.
The couple’s son Pablo, 21, said: “We are all going to love each other the same."
Urdangarín was sentenced to five years in prison in 2018 for embezzlement and money laundering through his non-profit organisation, the Noos Institute.
Last year, he was granted permission to move to the Grade 3 Spanish prison regime, where he must report to prison once a week.
He and Infanta Cristina were last pictured publicly together last month in photos published by HOLA! during holiday in Baqueira Beret. The couple share four children, Juan, Pablo, Miguel and Irene.
The admission of the affair is the latest scandal to rock the Spanish crown.
Juan Carlos, Spain’s former king and Felipe’s father, was forced into exile in Abu Dhabi in 2020 after a barrage of multi million-euro corruption allegations emerged.
It came six years after he abdicated the throne, handing the power to his son, who pledged to restore the crown’s reputation.
King Felipe issued a decree stripping his sister of the title of Duchess of Palma in 2015.
Both Cristina and his other sister, the Infanta Elen, were withdrawn from royal duties.
Pérez-Maura, an aristocrat and opinion editor of El Debate, a conservative online newspaper said: “This consort created multiple problems for his wife and the entire Spanish royal family and ended up with a prison sentence. But she never left her husband. How much easier it would have been for everyone if she had separated from Urdangarín,”
He ended: “Cristina has given everything for her husband but, as in so many other marriages, that has not been enough and everything seems to indicate that the marriage crisis is serious.
“She will now reflect on what she did for him and how her support for her husband could harm the crown, that is, harm Spain: the last thing a member of the royal family wants to do.”
