Manila, Philippines - So passionate about the arts and her assorted advocacies. So compassionate. So caring. So down-to-earth. So approachable. So appreciative. So inquisitive. So fashionable. So dynamic. These are some of the adjectives that best describe Queen Sofia of Spain who dazzled Manila recently with her royal presence. It was her third visit to the Philippines whose ties with Spain date back centuries ago. As early as during her honeymoon in the ’60s, she included Manila in the Asian leg of her tour.
“This is the best of the best of the best; this is what I like,” she gushes towards the end of the cocktail reception hosted by Senator Loren Legarda, chair of the Senate Committee on Cultural Communities, just before the Queen bid everyone a fond adios last Friday night.
The hostess with the mostest, Loren spent two weeks preparing for the visit, leaving no proverbial stone unturned — from the stylized Filipino-Spanish cuisine to the mix of classical (the Queen loves Bach), Spanish, and Filipino music rendered by flutist Rey Sison and guitarist Lester Demetillo to the flowers to the table runners and down to the plates used (all brought to the venue from Senator Legarda’s house).
“I researched on her — what she wanted to eat (the Queen is pescatarian) and what her favorite flowers were. She likes white flowers; I thought she would love our sampaguita,” says Loren, who paid meticulous attention to every detail.
White and light are just so right for the simply elegant Queen Sofia who came in a beige outfit with matching beige open-toed stilettos and small patent bag.
The Fabella Hall of the National Museum, where the lunch reception was held, bloomed with floral arrangements of white roses, white orchids, and sampaguita flowers mounted on driftwood. They blended perfectly with the fresh offerings on the menu prepared by Gilbert Pangilinan, who is the chef of the Spanish restaurant Cerveseria and the Japanese restaurant Kai in Greenbelt 3. The chilled seafood station thrilled guests with lobsters flown in from Palawan, prawns, and crab claws, as well as fresh lumpia with edible gumamela (yes, the flowers are for eating, too) on small bowls. There were open-faced sandwiches topped with tinapa pate with eggplant, roasted red peppers with garbanzo, chili flakes, and pine nuts; olives with Davao goat cheese, basil, and mint; chopped ripe cherry tomatoes, caramelized onions, and pesto. And si señor, there was vegetarian paella with fried shimeji mushroom, which chef Gilbert made just for the Queen.
“The queen loves vegetables,” reveals Maria Molina, deputy head of mission, Embassy of Spain. “She’s the healthiest of the members of the Spanish royal family.”
A cool attraction even as it was starting to drizzle outside was the halo-halo bar, accompanied by the sweet offerings of pastilyas in special wrapper (the Queen’s favorite — President Noynoy Aquino gifted her with a box of pastilyas during the reception at Malacañang and when he saw that she loved them, he gave her another box before she left the Palace) and the baby frozen brazo. It was a fruitful lunch, too, what with the tables teeming with fresh local fruits like mangosteen, mangoes, chicos, lanzones, and pomelos.
To wash it all down, on the house were the most refreshing beverages like dalandan juice, santol shake, and lemon grass tea.
So, what did the Queen eat?
“She ate everything,” says an amused Gilbert. “She finished everything on her plate. She particularly loved the mangosteen so we sent her one box at Manila Pen just before she left. And how she loved the goat cheese from Davao with olives! She said that the next time she visits, she’d make sure to go to Cerveseria and Kai.”
It was chef Gilbert’s first time to serve royalty and he was doubly thrilled because the Queen was so pleased with his cooking that she shook his hands thrice.
Fit and nifty at 74, Queen Sofia heartily enjoyed a glass of halo-halo loaded with halayang ube, leche flan, minatamis na saba, dayap, rind langka, and pinipig.
We could only make a royal guess that the gallery tour — she had to walk some flights of stairs in her high heels when the elevator malfunctioned — she did earlier must have made her very hungry.
But the truth is, the Queen was so taken by the menu she asked if Loren could sign it and if she could bring it home to Spain. “I was shy to sign the menu because she is the queen,” says Loren. “But I did. She wanted to take home mangosteen, which she loved so I sent her a box to her hotel room before she left. She said she wanted the king to try it.”
“Amazing, fantastic!” we overheard Queen Sofia say again and again as Senator Legarda walked her through the textile galleries where one would find a treasure trove of indigenous garments that tell the story of a hardy and hardworking people. Loren shared with the visibly delighted Queen the stories behind some notable items in the galleries, like the banton burial cloth, the oldest textile found in the Philippines, the abel Iloko from Vigan, Tinguian blanket from Abra, Gaddang garments from Ifugao, Maranao garments from Southern Mindanao, and textiles from Polomok, South Cotabato.
Still weaving magic are the weaving looms, some of which were loaned by Senator Legarda. Queen Sofia intently watched as an elderly Ifugao skillfully demonstrated the traditional Ifugao weaving.
The textile galleries are housed in two halls of the National Museum, one of which, the Queen Sofia Hall, was named after the Queen by inaugural donor Aboitiz Group Foundation in honor of her visit in 2006. “It’s serendipitous to house the textile gallery here, we didn’t know it was going to be named after her,” says Loren.
Showing off a black Filipiniana dress, Loren noted, “The fusion of Spanish and Filipino cultures is evident in many pieces in the textile galleries. For instance, there’s my grandmother’s ensemble made with abaca through a process called pinukpok (pounded), which softens fibers with a mortar and pestle to produce a silk-like finish. The design is obviously influenced by Spain, but the material is indigenous.”
Another fusion piece is the baro’t saya with a panuelo fashioned out of sinamay cloth.
“This is made from trees?” an amazed Queen Sofia asked as she took notice of a stunning work by an indigenous tribe.
And then the picture of a B’laan tribesman caught the Queen’s eye. “Muy guapo,” she blurts out, calling the attention of her First Secretary to the photo.
But if Queen Sofia left the museum with a song in her heart, it was because of the hudhud chant that was written just for her. Read the lyrics of this farewell song and feel the beat in your heart:
Thank you Your Majesty
For visiting our country
May you be blessed by God
And God be with you
In your safe trip back home
Hudhud chants are sung during special occasions in the lives of Ifugaos, such as during harvest and when weeding rice, at funeral wakes, and when they do bone-washing rituals. It was declared by UNESCO as one of the 19 Masterpieces of Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity.
The Ifugao chanters/weavers traveled 12 hours from the Cordilleras to sing and weave for the Queen. Touched by the gesture, Queen Sofia promised that next time she comes, she would visit Banaue. She lingered to talk to the chanters and anxiously inquired about their family life. At one point, she knelt down to have her picture taken with the Ifugaos.
“For this visit, she said what she wanted to do was to see something outside Manila that would show her the real Philippines that was in her mind,” relates Social Welfare Secretary Dinky Soliman who jokingly calls herself the GRO of the Cabinet.
The official escort of the Queen during her visits to Albay and Zamboanga, Dinky enthuses, “She’s the people’s queen. Everywhere she went, thousands of people would line the streets to see her. For these people, it was their first time to see a real queen (although the kids wondered why she was not wearing a crown). And she stopped to shake their hands. In Zamboanga, there was a point where she opened the door of the car and stood on the estribo to wave to the crowd. She could be a security nightmare!”
Dinky adds with a big smile, “She loves people and she loves to laugh.”
And she loves to please people. Dinky relates that in Legaspi, the Queen helped herself to a robust lapu-lapu dish. An observer remarked in jest, “Wasn’t Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan, who served the king of Spain, killed in the Battle of Mactan by a chieftain named Lapu Lapu? Where’s the sensitivity there?”
So appreciative of everything she sees, her plane circled the Mayon Volcano cone so she could take pictures with her cell phone. “Yes, she also brought her iPad; she’s quite techie,” says Dinky.
“She’s a genuinely caring queen,” says Loren. “She talked about trafficked children and women, and expressed concern about the problem. She asked about the difference between illegal recruitment and trafficking, which I explained.”
Although it was her first time to meet the Queen, Loren felt an instant connection with her. “She asked about my family, when I was going to retire, and what I would do after I retired. I said retirement is a long way off and after I retire, I want to visit the queen,” she says with a chuckle.
“She came to see first-hand the development aid projects (funded by the Spanish government through its development cooperation agency AECID for projects from local governance to disaster prevention, rural development, environment, education, health, and social services in partnership with Philippine government agencies),” says Antonio Garcia, First Secretary, Embassy of Spain.“The Philippines is a priority country for Spain.”
Asked to describe his Queen, Garcia says, “There are no words to describe her. She possesses intelligence, kindness, professionalism, and an admirable sense of duty.”
Viva la Reina Sofia!