Really I am bored of reading certain comments. I do not doubt that the King is machist, for age and education, but it does not mean that all the members of the House of the King or the Spanish are. And I do not also believe, that they are desperate for a male, because then all we would have a serious political problem.
What in Spain we have very clearly, is that it is necessary to differ between who occupies a position, and the wife or husband. In the Royal Family there are no persons who have had a more secondary role that the husbands of the Infantas, who have never had an act in solitarily, and they are men. Every person must have the responsibility that corresponds to him or her, and if the person tries to have more, we will criticize him or her.
Queen Sofia is very far from being a submissive woman, she is tremendously responsible towards the Monarchy and towards her children, submissive not. She has managed to make her own life, has acquired her own challenges. She knows that her husband and her son are the protagonists of the Monarchy and that she is there to help them, sometimes from a secondary role, sometimes from a principal role. And she does it well in both circumstances. Probably, only the history will discover how importantly has been the influence of this woman in the history of Spain.
But that it is only a part of her work, her official activity, there is other one very important, she directs and controls personally her own foundation, which invests every year more than one million Euros in social causes around the world, and that is developing in Spain a very important project for the fight against the Alzheimer. Probably her work does not have the repercussion that had to, maybe if she was organizing big parties to collect money or was looking for the support of famous people, she would have it ... but it has never been her way. She is the discreet woman, who can move all her influences to help the others and to support the projects in which she believes.