Infanta Cristina of Spain

The record

Compiled by the MrScandal desk from the documents below · Desk editor Kristaps Siliņš · Nov 9, 2026

Infanta Cristina is the youngest daughter of former King Juan Carlos I and the sister of King Felipe VI. She married Iñaki Urdangarin, an Olympic handball medallist turned businessman, in Barcelona in 1997, and on September 26 of that year her father granted her, for life and on the occasion of her marriage, the right to use the title Duchess of Palma de Mallorca. Her brother revoked that right by royal decree in June 2015.

Her own record in the Nóos case rests on what she said and what the court in Palma de Mallorca held. Questioned for six hours in February 2014, before charges were brought, she said she took her husband at his word. In January 2016 she lost a bid to avoid trial on two counts of tax fraud allegedly committed in 2007 and 2008. Testifying that March, she said she would answer only her lawyer's questions and denied being an accessory to tax evasion.

She was the first member of the royal family to face criminal charges since the monarchy was restored in 1975. In February 2017 the court cleared her of helping her husband evade taxes, while ordering a €265,000 payment for civil responsibility because she had benefited, indirectly and unknowingly, from his activities. Urdangarin was sentenced to six years and three months in prison and fined more than €500,000. At the time of the trial she was working for a Spanish bank in Switzerland.

Roles and honours on the record

• 1997-2015 Holder for life of the right to use the title Duchess of Palma de Mallorca, granted by Royal Decree 1502/1997 and revoked by Royal Decree 470/2015 source
• 2016 Employee of a Spanish bank in Switzerland, where she lived with her family source
• 2016-2017 Defendant in the Nóos trial in Palma de Mallorca, charged as an accessory to tax fraud and acquitted source