Royal Couple Will Spend 2 Days in L.A. : Spanish Monarchs to Visit--6 Years Late

The invitation may have been propped up on some ornate marble mantelpiece in the Zarzuela Palace in Madrid for nearly six years. But now they really, really are coming.

The city’s protocol office announced Friday that King Juan Carlos and Queen Sofia of Spain have accepted Mayor Tom Bradley’s longstanding invitation and will arrive in Los Angeles at the end of September, as part of the Spanish sovereigns’ eight-day tour of the Southwest United States, territory that Spanish conquistadores and missionaries first explored four centuries ago.

While the visits of Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II and Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands “were exciting,” protocol chief Bee Canterbury Lavery said, the presence of a Spanish king in the city whose first charter was issued by a Spanish king “really is the roots of Los Angeles.”

The two-day agenda for the 49-year-old monarchs is still not completely fixed, but it will include some highlights the couple probably did not see in 1962, Lavery said, when they honeymooned here.

Original Charter

On Sept. 30, they will be welcomed in City Council chambers, where the flag of Carlos III, Juan Carlos’ great-great-great-great-great-grandfather, who issued the original charter, hangs with other historical banners. Both Bradley and the king will speak briefly to an invitation-only crowd, Lavery said.

The public can then spot the sovereigns on their way to the original city plaza, where the king will rededicate a statue of Carlos III, which is being trundled over from its original MacArthur Park site for the event.

Also planned are a tour of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory near Pasadena, a chat with descendants of the original 12 Los Angeles settler families and a stop at the Westwood temple of Sephardic Jews, descendants of Jews expelled from Spain 500 years ago by the Inquisition.

The king will address a World Affairs Council luncheon on Oct. 1, then journey back to the Old Plaza, to the Avila adobe, the oldest existing residence in the city, and peek at the underground excavation of the zanja, the pueblo’s first water system.

Invitations Mailed

Much of the agenda is what it was six years ago, Lavery said, when Juan Carlos and Queen Sofia were coming to celebrate the city’s bicentennial. The invitations were mailed, the programs were already printed up but a coup attempt by military right-wing forces who shot up Parliament forced the king to send last-minute regrets. Last month, Lavery learned the trip was finally on again. A Sept. 25 meeting with President Reagan is scheduled before the couple begin their Southwest tour.

Juan Carlos, whose family nickname is Juanito, came to the throne in 1975 when rightist dictator Francisco Franco died. Like his wife, he is a descendant of Queen Victoria and therefore a distant cousin of Queen Elizabeth II. Queen Sofia, the daughter and sister of former kings of Greece, is also the great-granddaughter of German Kaiser Wilhelm II.