The 11 euros-menu story has hit the news this week. Actually, the story was as follows: the King went to Extremadura for an award ceremony, by helicopter (as usual). But the weather this week has been horrible (Felipe actually arrived half an hour later due to flight problems because of the wind), so they decided to return to Madrid by car instead. Probably the initial plan was to be back in the capital by lunchtime, but with the change it catched them in route. So they stopped at the road restaurant (the typical, usual road restaurant, full mostly of carriers on a normal day work, with the typical, normal cheap menu of traditional food with two courses, dessert, a drink and bread as all Spanish restaurant offers at work days between 1-4 a.m.) to get their lunch before continuing the travelling.
The restaurant owners published themselves the story at their Facebook page, with the pics they took with Felipe, and it soon became viral. Obviously, there had been the usual comments: those surprised by the anecdote, those who thought it was such a down-to-earth gesture and those who complained it was just PR stuff. And those rational ones who stated that the most normal thing to do when a road trip gets complicated and hunger catch you in the meantime is to stop wherever they can feed you
But, mostly, it has been one of these news that provides a source of endless online entertainment. The fact that King Felipe does such a normal, everyone's thing as eating the 11 euros menu of a road restaurant as we all have done made for lots of jokes imagining what other "cheap things for normal, porr people" he might do in his private life. You know, the kind of "Felipe VI chooses the "standard delivering" rather than "express" so he saves those 6 euros" or "the fridge of Felipe and Letizia is full of McDonalds' ketchup bags".
Anyway, aside from jokes, the restaurant owners were delighted and in their FB page they give us all the detail:
https://www.facebook.com/RestaurantePuertaDeExtremadura/posts/578324195662649
"Today it has been
a pride and a satisfaction to have had eating at mi house somebody as important as the King of Spain. Thank you, Your Majesty"
-Additional info: for those who don't know it, "pride and satisfaction" (
Me llena de orgullo y satisfacción - it fills me with pride and satisfaction) was a trademark quote of King JC. I don't even know when did he used it for the first time but he might have repeated it a deal of times because it became very famous. People were so amused of that eeehhh pompous, cheesy and definitely not very natural
way of expressing himself so it become the key quote for every JC's imitation and quite a new idiom in Spain.
- For the record, that quote is so important and famous when you come to Spain, that even Ryan Reynolds (or his Twitter team, but very well played anyway) used him to promote the premiere in Spain of his movie Deadpool on Twitter and people here cracked up (
x)
Also, they say he behaved like any normal client, that was kind and smiling and took pics with everybody that asked him.
More on the restaurant's page, the pics:
https://www.facebook.com/RestaurantePuertaDeExtremadura/posts/578880295607039
https://www.facebook.com/RestaurantePuertaDeExtremadura/posts/578881025606966