Science Fair Project Encyclopedia
Sofía of Spain
Her Majesty Queen Sofía (Sofía de Grecia y Hannover de Borbón), styled HM The Queen, is the queen of Spain, wife of King Juan Carlos of Spain.
She was born in Athens on November 2, 1938, as Sophia, the eldest child of the King of Greece, Paul I (1901-1964) and his queen, Frederika, Princess of Hanover, Princess of Great Britain and Ireland, Duchess of Brunswick-Lüneburg (1917-1981). Both her parents were descendants of Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom, and despite her country of birth, her family tree on both sides is almost exclusively German and Danish in origin, the Greek royal house being a cadet branch of the Danish royal family of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg.
Princess Sofía spent her childhood in Egypt and South Africa during her family's exile during World War II, returning to Greece in 1946, finishing her education in Germany, and returning home to study pediatrics, music and archeology. She represented Greece in sailing at the 1960 Olympic Games.
On May 14, 1962 she married Prince Juan Carlos de Borbón y Borbón, the future King Juan Carlos, whom she met on a cruise of the Greek islands in 1954. In doing so, she relinquished all rights to the throne of Greece and converted to Roman Catholicism from Greek Orthodoxy. The couple have three children: Infanta Elena on December 20, 1963, Infanta Cristina on June 13, 1965, and Prince Felipe on January 30, 1968.
The queen of Spain is the executive president of the Queen Sofía Foundation, which in 1993 sent funds for relief in Bosnia, and is the honorary president of the Royal Board on Education and Care of Handicapped Persons, and the Foundation for Aid for Drug Addicts. She takes special interest in programs against drug addiction, traveling to conferences in both Spain and abroad. The Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía is named after her.
She is a pescetarian refusing meat but not fish, which is a rather uncommon custom in Spain. She also doesn't watch bullfighting, contrasting with her aficionado husband.
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