The Urdangarin clan: life in three different countries of Juan, Pablo, Miguel and Irene, the children of Iñaki and the infanta Cristina

Royalty The only one who continues to reside with her mother in Switzerland is Irene, the youngest of the four children of the marriage.

By Nuria Hernandez

"These are things that happen." With this phrase Pablo Nicolás Urdangarin, the second son of the Infanta Cristina and Iñaki Urdangarin, spoke for the first time before a microphone after the appearance of the photos of the father holding his hand with Ainhoa ​​Armentia. The discretion of the four children of the still married couple has been a constant since the couple's eldest son, Juan Valentín, came into the world in September 1999, two years after his wedding in the Barcelona Cathedral.

Neither Juan Valentín nor his three little brothers, Pablo Nicolás, Miguel and Irene, the youngest of the family, have starred in public acts nor, at least for the moment, are considering making the leap to public life as his cousin, Victoria, has done. Federica, daughter of the infanta Elena and Jaime de Marichalar, who a few months ago opened her social networks and began to attend events, red carpets and meetings with other influencers.

Each of the four children of Iñaki and Doña Cristina lives in a different city (and in three different countries) and the only one who still resides in the family home in Switzerland with her mother is the youngest of the family, Irene, 16 years. The eldest, Juan Valentín, came into the world in Barcelona on September 29, 1999, a month before his parents celebrated the second anniversary of their marriage, which had been celebrated on October 4, 1997 in Barcelona. Shy and serious in the images we saw of him when he was little, he enjoyed summers in Mallorca as a child with his cousins ​​Felipe de Marichalar, who is a year older than him, and Victoria Federica, born in 2000.

In his days at Marivent he was always seen happy but with a certain halo of shyness, which had little or nothing to do with the prickly character of his cousin Felipe Juan Froilán, who since he was a child proved to be a fun and joking young man. Juan Valentín always went to the sailing courses paid for by his grandmother, Doña Sofía, and we saw him pose next to the then queen in the Mallorcan port every August. After spending their childhood in Barcelona, ​​in 2009 they moved to Washington (USA), where they lived until August 2012. There they settled in the luxurious neighborhood of Chavy Chase together with some of the wealthiest families in the area and Juan and his brothers studied at the elite Lycée de Rochambeau. They returned to Barcelona and continued their studies at the French Lyceum in Pedralbes, through whose classrooms the children of other well-known faces such as Joan Laporta or the daughters of the former president of Pronovias, Alberto Palatchi, have also passed.

The young man graduated from the Ecole Internationale de la Route de Chêne in Geneva -where the family arrived in 2013-, one of the most exclusive and elite private centers in the country, which costs about 30,000 euros per course, an amount that he always paid for. King Juan Carlos. The school (to which the other three children of the Infanta Cristina have also attended) is located very close to the family home and there he had the anonymity that he would not have had if his parents had decided to continue living in Spain.

After finishing high school in 2017, the first son of Urdangarin, with a great religious faith and very responsible since he was a child, when he took care of his little brothers, he took a sabbatical year before starting university, something very common in international education, although not so much in our country. He went to Cambodia and the Southeast Asian country worked as a volunteer aid worker in the non-profit organization Sauce in the city of Battambang, which promotes the inclusion of the most vulnerable people through education, health and the development of communities. This NGO is directed by the Asturian Jesuit Monsignor Enrique Figaredo, who has dedicated almost four decades to helping those most in need in Asia.

Upon his return from this great life experience, Juan enrolled in the International Relations degree at the University of Essex, located in Colchester and considered one of the most recognized British universities for his teaching and research. After three years, he settled in Madrid and always with the discretion that characterizes him, he made numerous visits to his father during his stay in Brieva prison, in Ávila. In Madrid he has been seen as a volunteer at the Entreculturas Foundation, a non-governmental development cooperation organization promoted by the Society of Jesus that works for the education and development of peoples. In the capital he usually meets with his cousins ​​Felipe and Victoria Federica and with his aunt Elena, with whom he has a very close relationship.

The second of the children of the couple is Pablo Nicolás, who turned 21 on December 6. He is the only one who has inherited his father's passion for the sport and follows in his footsteps in the world of handball. He has lived in Barcelona since the summer of 2020 and there he fulfilled his great dream in October: to make his handball debut at Barça (a match his parents watched from the stands), the team in which his father grew up and where he played fourteen seasons, between 1986 and 2000. Iñaki was also international with the Spanish handball team in three Olympic Games, in which he won two bronze medals in Atlanta (1996) and Sydney (2000). After those Games he retired from competition.

Pablo has always fought for his sports dream. Since childhood he has played handball and before coming to Barcelona he spent a year in Hannover, Germany, where he moved from Geneva to play for the TSV Burgdorf youth team of the Bundesliga club TSV Hannover-Burgdorf. There he lived in a sports residence with other boys who, like him, tried to make their way in that world and trained daily in a sports center near his home. At the head of the coaching staff was Antonio Carlos Ortega, who was his father's teammate on the Spanish National Team and with whom he won five consecutive European Cups at Barcelona, ​​and Pablo was trained by another former Barça player, Iker Romero.

After his time in Germany, he signed for HBC Nantes, an important club in the French league that also has Spanish names at the head of its technical teams. But in the summer of 2020, Doña Sofía's grandson landed in Barcelona to train without a record at the Catalan club and did so with the intention of staying and living in the city where he grew up. And so he has done. After spending time at the home of some friends of his parents in the Pedralbes neighbourhood, in the upper part of the city, he now lives in La Masía -the residence of the club's youth players-, in the Ciutat Esportiva del Barça, which is located in Sant Joan Despí.

Since his return to Spain, Pablo, who plays the piano and surfs in Bidart, where he usually spends the summer with his paternal family, has led a very normal life: he goes by bus to the European University International Business School, where he is studying a degree in Business Administration, and when he leaves class he changes his clothes and puts on the Barcelona kit to go to train at the Ciutat Esportiva Joan Gamper with his classmates. He likes social networks, especially Tik Tok, and he could have already had a first love next to a classmate with whom he has been seen to be very complicit when he left university.

We had never heard him speak until last Wednesday the magazine Lecturas published some photos of his father holding the hand of a woman who is not the Infanta Cristina. The media then waited for Pablo outside his house and asked him about the snapshots. “I prefer not to say anything because it is a family issue. But, that's it... These are things that happen and they are things that we have to talk about at home, among ourselves”, said Pablo Urdangarin. “We are all calm, we are going to love each other the same”, he added in a polite and natural way.

Cristina and Iñaki's third son is Miguel, who is the godson of King Felipe VI. He was born on April 20, 2002, so this year he will be 20 years old. As a child he made "good friends" with his cousin Felipe, since both always had a reputation for being two little pranksters and causing the adults of the royal family to laugh out loud. The young man has been living in London for a year. Passionate about the sea since childhood, Miguel began studying Marine Sciences or Oceanography in the British capital, a field of science that studies the seas, oceans and everything related to them, including physical processes, such as currents and the tides, to the geological and biological ones.

Like his brother Pablo, Miguel is a responsible, studious boy with a great sensitivity for music and also plays the piano. In fact, during his college years in Switzerland, he gave several recitals attended by his parents. He also practices skiing and surfing, as well as sailing, a sport that, like his brothers, he learned in his summers in Mallorca. Despite his mother's estrangement from his brother Felipe, Miguel maintains a great relationship with his godfather and four years ago they were seen to have a great harmony going sailing together in Palma.

Irene is the youngest of the four siblings. She turned 16 on June 5 last year and is the only one who still lives in Switzerland with her mother, who goes to work every day at the Aga Khan Foundation (AKF), based in Geneva, where she is an interagency coordinator within the Aga Khan Trust For Culture. The girl received the name Irene in honor of her grandmother Sofia's sister, Irene from Greece, and they say that the emeritus adores her (they both love classical music) and we have seen them together on several occasions going to the theater or ballet in Spain. From a very young age, she has traveled the world with her parents and siblings, since they left for the United States when they were only four years old.

The young woman studies at l'Ecole Internationale but often travels to Barcelona to visit her brother Pablo de Ella, with whom she has an accomplice and close relationship. As a teenager, she has always been the right eye of her three older brothers, who have cared for her and protected her to the fullest in her father's most complicated moments. She speaks English, French and German, plays the piano and goes skiing and swimming. Although she is only four months old with her cousin Princess Eleanor, both are very different in taste and style. Irene is a great follower of fashion and likes to follow trends, with a style more similar to that of Victoria Federica, with whom she gets along wonderfully, than that of Doña Letizia's eldest daughter.