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Queen Sofía of Spain

b. 1938

Born
2 Nov 1938, Psychiko Palace
Country of birth
Greece

Living person. The family sees only the name, dates and photo; everything else stays private unless they choose to share it.

facts
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sources
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Facts and their sources

Tap a fact to see where it comes from.

A life in time

  1. Born · Psychiko Palace

    Birth, Psychiko Palace

  2. Child born: Infanta Elena, Duchess of Lugo

    Birth, Madrid

  3. Child born: Infanta Cristina of Spain

    Birth, Madrid

  4. Child born: Felipe VI of Spain

    Birth, Madrid

What was it like?

The world around Psychiko Palace, 1938: who ruled, who else was alive, how people lived. This is general history, not a record about the family, and every item shows where it comes from.

Queen was born around the same time as Elvis Presley, John Lennon, and Pelé.

Born around the same time

  • Elvis Presley

    1935 · American singer and actor (1935–1977)

  • John Lennon

    1940 · British musician (1940–1980)

  • Pelé

    1940 · Brazilian footballer (1940–2022)

  • Jackie Stewart

    1939 · Scottish racing driver

  • Tenzin Gyatso

    1935 · 14th Dalai Lama, the spiritual and temporal leader of Tibetans

  • Bruce Lee

    1940 · Hong Kong–American martial artist and actor (1940–1973)

Fashion

Handwoven Alatzas Fabric Clothing

In poor villages, women often wove their own clothes from cotton fabric called alatzas, with the previous year's festive outfit becoming the current year's work clothing.

Traditional Pigskin Tsarouchia Footwear

Rural men wore footwear called tsarouchia made from pigskin or ox skin, which were often slippery in the rain.

Music

Entertainment at Home and Taverns

Ordinary people frequently held gatherings at home where they sang and danced to popular music, as professional dance halls were often considered too expensive. Instruments commonly used at these home gatherings included guitars, accordions, and violins.

Instruments of the Underworld

In rebetiko culture, popular in urban neighborhoods, instruments like the bouzouki, tzoura, and baglamas were favored in hashish dens because they were affordable, simple to repair, and easy to conceal from police. Police in the 1930s and during the Metaxas dictatorship actively confiscated these instruments.

Getting around

Leisurely train stops and socialization

Trains stopped frequently at every station for up to ten minutes, during which passengers would socialize, buy goods from hawkers, and listen to the guard's penny trumpet signal departure.

Walking and pack animals in Crete

In rural Crete, people traveled across the island mostly on foot or by pack animals like donkeys and mules, with the longest 60 km journey taking 24 hours.

Daily life

Difficult school commutes and assistance

Children in rural areas often walked for one or two hours each way to reach school, sometimes tucking newspapers inside their clothing for warmth on rainy days. To support poor students, some schools distributed basic supplies like sturdy leather shoes and smocks.

Limited water and sanitation access

Before modern infrastructure, households relied on wells or communal village taps for water, often hauling it in barrels. Bathrooms were minimal or nonexistent; villagers frequently used trees or fields as toilets.

Food
Around 1941–1943

Frugal soup recipes during the occupation

To stretch meager supplies during the famine, families prepared soup using only water, a few olives per person, and grated tomatoes, if they could find them. Leftover vegetable dishes were also chopped up and boiled with water and olives to create a thin dinner soup.

Around 1941–1943

Scavenging weeds and scraps for survival

Desperate families scavenged for edible weeds like dandelions and vlita, which were boiled or fried into balls. In extreme cases, residents searched rubbish bins for scraps like onion leaves or lemon rinds to satisfy their hunger.

Prices and wages
Around 1940–1944

Hyperinflation of bread prices

The price of bread rose from 8 drachmas per oka in 1940 to 100,000 drachmas per oka by February 1944.

Around 1945–1945

Cost of a suit in 1945

In 1945, a good suit cost 70,000 drachmas, which was equivalent to seven months of pay for a higher-paid worker.

Work

Common jobs for ordinary working people

Common jobs for ordinary people included industrial factory labor, agricultural work, and port-related tasks. Women were frequently employed in sectors like textiles, tobacco, and carpet making, while many others worked in informal or temporary roles to survive.

Memorable aspects of industrial life

Stoking furnaces was considered so dangerous and physically punishing it was nicknamed the Dachau of factories. Meanwhile, some factory clubs fostered community during breaks, with workers knitting, playing sports, or tending to vegetable gardens on factory grounds.

News and letters
Around 1943–1944

Months-Long Mail Transit Times

Due to severe wartime instability, transit times for mail could be extreme, such as one registered letter that took 5 and a half months to reach its destination in 1943–1944.

Around 1944–1944

Extreme Postal Delays During Wartime

During the disruptions of World War II, a registered letter mailed in Greece could take as long as 62 days to reach its domestic destination.

During their lifetime

  1. 1953

    Drachma devaluation of 1953

    In 1953, Greece devalued the drachma by 50 percent, which helped curb inflation and started a period of sustained economic growth.

  2. 1953

    Ionian Islands earthquakes in 1953

    In August 1953, three massive earthquakes struck the Ionian Islands, killing 476 people and leaving thousands of survivors homeless.

  3. 1955

    Massive labor emigration wave

    Between 1955 and 1973, over 600,000 Greeks migrated to Germany alone, as part of a massive wave of post-war labor emigration.

  4. 1967

    Military junta coup of 1967

    A military junta seized power in 1967, dissolving democratic institutions and ruling until the restoration of democracy in 1974.

  5. 1981

    Greece joins European Economic Community

    Greece joined the European Economic Community in 1981, marking a significant step in the country's economic and political integration.

Family

Parents

Spouses

Children

Ancestors and children

Open the full tree

Four generations back to the right, the children to the left. The number beside a child counts the generations of descendants known after them.