Spain
Marriage in the royal family: Infanta Cristina and Iñaki Urdangarin separate
Infanta Cristina and her husband Inaki Urdangarin – pictured here in January 2015 – have split up.
© dpa
Pictures of Iñaki Urdangarin holding hands with another woman emerged last week, now the former handball player and Cristina von Spain are finally splitting up.
After 24 years of marriage it’s over: Infanta Cristina and Iñaki Urdangarin will go their separate ways in the future. This was announced by King Felipe’s sister and the former handball player on Monday in a joint statement. “We have decided by mutual consent to end our marriage,” the statement to the Spanish press agency “EFE” said. Both want to continue to take care of their four children together, they said. They did not want to comment further on the separation and asked for respect for their privacy.
The background to the separation is likely to be pictures published by the magazine “Lecturas” last week. They showed Iñaki Urdangarin holding hands with another woman in France. According to “Hola”, it should be an employee of a law firm for which the 54-year-old also works. Spanish media intercepted Urdangarin outside his workplace in Vitoria, northern Spain, on Monday, but he declined to comment, citing privacy concerns. The infanta had not officially commented on the pictures. Son Pablo already said last week that the family will continue to love each other.
Cristina of Spain: Four children from marriage to Iñaki Urdangarin
Infanta Cristina and Iñaki Urdangarin met at the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta and married in October 1997. The marriage produced four children: Juan Valentin (22), Pablo (21), Miguel (19) and Irene (16). The couple and other people were investigated in the course of a corruption scandal in 2011. While the 56-year-old was acquitted in the trial, Urgandarin was sentenced to five years and ten months in prison in February 2017. After spending several years in a prison near Madrid, the 54-year-old was transferred last year to Zaballa – just a few kilometers from his Basque hometown of Vitoria. There he is allowed to sleep near the prison in his mother’s house. In the course of a detention relief, he looked for a job as a management consultant in a law firm. In order to protect herself and her children from hostilities in the course of the corruption scandal, Infanta Cristina moved to Geneva with her children in 2013, where she still lives today with her daughter Irene.