The Queen has surprised on social networks this Book Day with an unexpected message in Guaraní to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Centro Cultural de España in Asunción, Paraguay. While the world’s eyes in the literary world were focused on presenting Gonzalo Celorio with the prestigious Cervantes Prize, the most important award in Spanish-language literature, Queen Letizia diverged from the official agenda with a video that has gone viral in just a few hours.
Aimed at commemorating “out of schedule” those causes and anniversaries that excite her most, Queen Letizia has once again brought to the forefront the journalist inside her and, with a surprise speech, has shared her congratulations to the “Juande,” as this center is popularly known, which she had the opportunity to visit in person during the cooperation trip she carried out to Paraguay in 2021.
The queen’s surprise speech in Guaraní
The Queen opened her message with a few words in Guaraní, the indigenous co-official language of Paraguay (along with Spanish) spoken by about ten million people throughout the South Cone of America. «Vy’apavẽ ne arambotýre!» (Happy birthday!), Queen Letizia pronounced in a video that, although not yet shared from the Royal Household, we have been able to learn about through the association’s own Instagram profiles, from the Embassy of Spain in Paraguay and, also, from the Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation in Paraguay.
Then, and for almost three minutes, Queen Letizia has extolled this special anniversary which is even more interesting because it is not a life, but a constellation of stories, as if it were a piece of Ñandutí. That allusion to Ñandutí, the country’s traditional lace, and above all, the Guaraní greeting with which she began her speech, have generated unanimous applause on social media, where the video has gone viral in a few hours.
During her intervention, the queen reflected on the meaning of half a century of cultural activity of the ‘Juande’, “a time in which people already have enough experience to pause and think, take stock of life and imagine something about the future,” and on the shared history between the two countries. “It is an example of cultural and social cooperation and a driver of the network of cultural centers of the Agency, which now counts another 15 centers in Latin America and Africa,” she highlighted.
Queen Letizia visited Paraguay in 2021 on one of her cooperation trips and has confessed, in addition to her desire to be there to celebrate this anniversary and return, that she remembers “very well all the people I met” in the library, in the exhibition halls, in the assembly hall, in the inner courtyards, where she saw Néstor Portillo’s masks, Ediltrudis Noguera’s ceramics or the dance performed by a group of people with disabilities.
To finish, Queen Letizia thanked the Center for being “a vibrant archive of our history and a meeting point, a place of training and creation built on respect and inclusion” and she bid farewell as she began her speech, with a Guaraní word: «aguyje», which means thank you.
Letizia, a cooperative queen
Within Queen Letizia’s institutional agenda, there are several duties in which the monarch engages with particular enthusiasm. We know that the queen has a penchant for all acts related to communication, journalism, and the arts, from cinema to literature. Also for causes that support women, children, and the most disadvantaged. Therefore, within her schedule, cooperation trips are of vital importance. And judging by this unexpected gesture, the one she carried out in Paraguay in 2021 marked her in a special way.
Since ascending the throne, Queen Letizia has visited as a cooperant, in addition to the cited country in the Southern Cone, Honduras and El Salvador (2015 and 2020), Senegal (2017), the Dominican Republic and Haiti (2018), Mozambique (2019), Mauritania (2022), Colombia (2023), Guatemala (2024) and Cabo Verde (2025). This summer it is planned that the queen will again put on the red vest and boots to visit Bolivia and learn firsthand about the activities carried out there by the Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation.
