Despite its tight schedule, the State visit of the kings to Finland is leaving us with great moments, beyond the geopolitical importance of this diplomatic encounter and the commercial, economic, and cultural alliances sealed between the two countries. This was seen at a Helsinki school, when a children’s choir surprised Queen Letizia with a rendition of Que canten los niños, by José Luis Perales. A few hours later, the gala dinner of President Stubb and the First Lady again became the stage for another anecdote that is generating a great deal of talk.
It is customary that, in such high-level diplomatic encounters, hosts and honorees wink at the other country in their speeches and dare to utter a few words in its official language. This is what Alexander Stubb did at the Helsinki gala dinner, and minutes later, King Felipe VI did so when taking the floor.
Although the president was seen as more adept with Spanish than our monarch with Finnish, it must be said that this language is far from simple and, moreover, its Uralic (Finnic-Ugric) origin shares no roots with the Indo-European languages to which Spanish belongs.
What happened is that King Felipe, after congratulating Alexander Stubb “on your Spanish,” defended himself as well as he could in Finnish: “Arvoisa tasavallan presidentti ja rouva Innes-Stubb” (“your Excellency the President of the Republic and Mrs. Innes-Stubb”), he said, “hyvät naiset ja herrat” (“ladies and gentlemen”) “hyvää iltaa” (“good evening”), the king managed to say. The day before, in a gathering with the Spanish community in the Nordic country, he had already stumbled a bit with the name of the school to which Queen Letizia would go, whom he spontaneously addressed with a playful “learn the name, you’re going to visit it.”
🇪🇸🇫🇮 Felipe VI surprises by delivering part of his speech in Finnish during the official dinner held on the occasion of his State visit to Finland https://t.co/d5LeX5WOVx https://t.co/Uj2SJZ99Li
— Europa Press (@europapress) October 7, 2026
But beyond the king’s pronunciation, the main star of this speech was precisely Queen Letizia. Or, rather, her reaction to Felipe VI’s words in Finnish. The queen could not hide her surprise, and her very expressive face revealed Letizia’s astonishment at hearing her husband speak. Wide eyes, a gaze that roved the room, smiles… and, finally, a chorus of laughter with the rest of the hall.
This amusing reaction to Felipe VI’s Finnish words is merely an anecdote, but the truth is that it is the best reflection of Queen Letizia’s perfectionism: another demonstration that she is a journalist before a queen and that she masters the art of communication to perfection, as she has proven on countless occasions.
A master of the spoken word, with flawless diction and a masterful way of weaving speeches, that professional bent always leads Queen Letizia to pay close attention to every detail of what her daughters say in their public appearances and, of course, to what King Felipe says. This time, it would be no less, and her face spoke volumes.
