planetcher said:
Maybe because Spain is a soccer-country. Is basketball big in Spain as it is here in the US? Maybe that's why the Casa Real didn't think it was important to send someone. You're right that reminds me that Inaki was not in Greece, perhaps he was left with the kids who probably already started with school. It wasn't his fault because "The Powers That Be" (aka the gray-haired men) didn't send him, right?
Does Casa Real always have to send a representative to all sports competitions that Spain competes on? I'm just wondering why the people and the press are making such a big deal out of their absence. It's not the end of the world, and I heard they're going to meet the Kings and the Princes tomorrow.
Really this is an exercise of demagoguery on the part of the press.
Because the Royal Family is not in all the sports events, there have been competitions of hockey and waterpolo, where they have won world and the Royal Family has not been, because it is impossible that the world is crossed following all the Spanish sports.
In Spain the most important sport is the football with difference ... loo that happens is that the national team of football never gains anything. The Kings and the Princes travelled to the World Championship of Germany .... and when Spain was eliminated they criticized them for travelling for nothing.
The basketball is the second sport of ball of the most important.
The boys of basketball started playing very well in the games before the world championship, started playing and at winning, and the people started following them, and they came to the final...ultimately the whole country celebrates it. If they had lost nobody would remember the Royal Family, and if they had gone and lost they would criticize them for going.
The World Championship was in Japan, so it is a trip was very long and it was complicating the situation. But this one has been the first time that Spain has gained the world one of basketball, and the people were deceived by the topic, so partly the press has reason on having said that they have committed a mistake.
Sometimes the press is stupid and it does not report well, and later they cheat the people.
Evidently there are absurd critiques, because some of them, habitually, attack the Princes, and they say that they were not because they were of wedding. Thing that is not true, because the wedding was Saturday and the game on Sunday ... and with wedding or without it, they could never travel to Japan, because I do not believe that to leave a children with Down's Syndrome, for going to sees run game of basketball seem likely to nobody. The same thing for the Kings, who had on Monday an act with the ambassadors of Spain in the world, which only they assemble in Madrid once a year.
Different it is the case of the Infantas who were free of agenda and who could have done the effort. They were not in Greece because already they had returned on Friday (the Queen had an official act on Saturday). Besides, how I have said before, in case of the Dukes of Palm, they have been present at several competitions, to rest to the selection of handball, a minority sport in Spain. It does not seem to be very correct to be present at the competitions of the friends as official representatives and not those of other sportsmen more important and more followed by the population.
From reuters via yahoo