On Monday, Queen Sofia will cross the threshold of Tatoi again. This time, it will be to say goodbye to Princess Irene, who died last week at age 83. But for Sofia, the one-time summer palace of the former Greek royal family is more than a scene of pine trees and melancholic ruins: it is a place of farewells, stretching back to February 1981, when she returned to Greece and Tatoi for the first time as queen, in circumstances exceptional and sad.
Unlike Monday’s burial for Princess Irene, which follows a Saturday prayer service in Madrid and a funeral Monday at Metropolitan Cathedral of Athens, the Tatoi interment for Sofia’s mother, Queen Federica of Greece, was not official, and took place almost furtively.
According to chronicles of the time, such as the one published by El PaÃs, the government of the Hellenic Republic would not even authorize the plane carrying the mortal remains of Federica to land at the Athens airport. Instead, Sofia accompanied her mother’s coffin directly to Tatoi, where King Juan Carlos; Princess Irene of Greece; and the exiled Constantine and Anna Maria of Greece convened for the funeral.
In Tatoi, the atmosphere that cold February day reflected the political tension of a Greece still digesting the end of its monarchy—in fact, Queen Sofia was required to secure special permission from the Greek government for the burial, which only allowed the family six hours for the services. The kings moved in a guarded enclosure, where the affection of the few royalists who also wanted to pay homage to Queen Federica was mixed with the official attitude of disdain. It was a lightning-fast trip that left Queen Sofia with the pain of a half-return to the place where she’d grown up.
“Only the Spanish flag flew at half mast yesterday in Athens as a sign of mourning for the death of Queen Frederica of Greece,” said the special envoy of El PaÃs at the time. “It was personally King Juan Carlos who decided that the Spanish Embassy in Athens should apply the protocol of mourning agreed in Madrid, preventing the Spanish flag from reaching the top of the mast. This gesture contrasts in the central avenue of Vassilissis Sofia, with the ostentation of the immediate official buildings, where the flags are flying full.”
“I think I had never seen the queen in such a state of distress and crying with such bitterness,” said Jaime Peñafiel, one of the few Spanish journalists who managed to circumvent the press veto of the Greek authorities to access the Tatoi compound. In a remembrance of that day, he noted that Queen Sofia had to ask for extra permission to enter her former home for a few minutes, just before the time she had been granted to visit the estate ran out.
Another seventeen years passed before Queen Sofia could make a less contentious return to Greece. In May of 1998, King Juan Carlos and Queen Sofia made their first state visit to Greece, a milestone that symbolized the definitive reconciliation between the personal history of the Spanish consort and the reality of diplomatic relations between the two countries: Greece was the only country of the European Union that the King and Queen of Spain had not yet visited.
On that occasion, the reception was very different: there was a state welcome and the streets of Athens were filled with hundreds of royalists shouting “vivas” to Sofia, reported the chronicle of El Pais, as the queen toured the Acropolis or visited the school where she had studied as a child. Queen Sofia also took the opportunity to return with King Juan Carlos to Tatoi, where, without the restrictions of 1981, she was able to calmly visit the tombs of King Paul and Queen Frederica and lay wreaths on behalf of other relatives such as Constantine.
Since then, Queen Sofia’s visits to Greece have become more frequent, both for family events and institutional acts. At the same time, the scene at Tatoi has also changed: in ruins for years and years, the Greek government has begun to transform it into a museum about the Hellenic monarchy, in which displays will feature the rich history of Sofia’s family and the years they lived in the storied estate.