Dutch princess Amalia donates tulip garden to Madrid after secretly living there to flee mafia threats

Next spring, Madrid will be home to a new garden of white and orange tulips thanks to Princess Catharina-Amalia of Orange, daughter of King Willem-Alexander and Queen Maxima of the Netherlands. The 20-year-old heir to the Dutch throne has donated the flowers in gratitude for the warm welcome she received in the Spanish capital during the period in which she secretly lived there, fleeing threats from organized crime back home.

The flower-planting ceremony was presided over on November 11 by the mayor of Madrid, José Luis Martínez-Almeida, together with the Dutch ambassador in Spain, Roel Nieuwenkamp. During the inauguration of the garden, in the area of the Plaza de Oriente closest to the Teatro Real, the mayor conveyed words of thanks from the Princess of Orange, who was unable to attend the event. “Due to special circumstances, I had the privilege of living for a year in your beautiful Madrid. The warmth with which I was received led me to consider Madrid my home for a time, so I wish to express my deep gratitude to the city, its inhabitants and all those who made it possible.”

During the last months of 2022, Princess Amalia, as she is normally referred to, was unable to lead a normal life in the Netherlands due to concerns for her safety. The country’s intelligence services discovered encrypted messages about an alleged attack or kidnapping of the crown princess, and her security detail was reinforced. Due to this situation, she was unable to move in with friends in an apartment in downtown Amsterdam that her parents had rented for her as she began college studies at the University of Amsterdam. And after she received threats from the Mocro Maffia, an organized crime group in the Netherlands with ties to drug trafficking and human smuggling, she lived incognito in Madrid for a year in 2023, taking courses remotely for her degree in Politics, Psychology, Law and Economics. This situation did not transpire until some time later.

Although the presence of the Dutch princess in Madrid had been remarked on by the Spanish media, it was always believed that these were sporadic getaways, not a permanent move. Her true situation was not revealed until last April when, during an official trip by Spain’s King Felipe VI and Queen Letizia to the Netherlands, King Willem-Alexander revealed in his speech during a gala dinner that his eldest daughter had lived secretly in the Spanish capital for a year. The matter had been kept under wraps with the complicity of the Spanish monarchs — Felipe VI is one of the godparents of the Dutch monarch’s eldest daughter. “Last year, circumstances made [our eldest daughter, Catharina-Amalia] reside in Madrid. From there she was able to continue her studies at the University of Amsterdam. All of this was possible thanks to the affectionate dedication of a large number of her fellow citizens and their majesties,” said Willem-Alexander. He also described the heir to the throne’s stay in Madrid as a “moving sign of friendship.”

During her stay in the Spanish capital, the National Police deployed a unit to protect the princess, who lived in a central Madrid neighborhood under strict surveillance by officers of the Organized Crime Unit and the Central Brigade of Special Protections.

Now, officials of the City of Madrid add, it is the Princess of Orange who is thanking the capital. “It is a small sample of the beautiful flowers of the Netherlands, to be displayed in the beautiful Plaza de Oriente,” the young woman added in the note she sent for the garden ceremony. The note said she hopes that this offering of flowers representative of her country “will bring a little extra color to Madrid, especially in the spring, in the same way that she received everything that the city generously gave her.”

The tulips will bloom next spring in a corner of the central Plaza de Oriente, recalling the princess’s silent stay in the capital and as a reminder of the historical and cultural ties that unite Spain and the Netherlands, where the area historically known as Flanders was ruled by the Spanish branch of the Habsburgs from 1556 to 1714.

The princess herself has never provided many details about what her life was like in Madrid, although in April 2023 she did speak publicly about the difficult situation she was experiencing. “I will be honest: I am still having a very hard time. I miss student life, walking down the street, entering a shop without problems… and I hope that things will change as soon as possible,” she said after an official visit to the Dutch territories in the Caribbean, a trip she went on with her parents.

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