Iñaki Urdangarin

Iñaki Urdangarin was born on 15 January 1968 in the town of Zumárraga, in Gipuzkoa province, within the autonomous community of Basque country in northern Spain. Urdangarin's father, Juan María Urdangarin Berriochoa, also born in Zumarraga, was an engineer and businessman in the chemical and the banking industries. Urdangarin's mother, Claire Françoise Liebaert Courtain, was born in Antwerp, Belgium and is of Spanish Basque and Belgian (both Walloon and Flemish) descent.

He has six siblings. His paternal grandparents Laureano de Urdangarin y Larrañaga (1898–1982) and wife Ana de Berriochoa y Elgarresta (1902–1996) came from the tiny and humble Basque village of Zumarraga.

He obtained an MBA after a "tailor made study".

At the age of 18, Urdangarin became a professional handball player with FC Barcelona Handbol, where he remained until his retirement in 2000. Meanwhile, he studied at the Escuela Superior de Administración y Dirección de Empresas (ESADE) in Barcelona, from which he received a master's degree in business administration.

As a member of the Spanish handball team, he participated in the 1992, 1996, and 2000 Summer Olympics, serving as team captain in 2000. The team won the bronze medal in 1996 and 2000.

Urdangarin has been a member of the Spanish Olympic Committee since 4 April 2001, and was elected first deputy chairman on 16 February 2004. In 2001, he received the Grand Cross of the Royal Order of Sports Merit.

In September 2001, it was reported that Urdangarin had been appointed director of planning and development at Octagon Esedos, a company dedicated to sports marketing. At the same time, he retired from professional handball.

According to the Royal Household, Urdangarin met the Infanta Cristina, Duchess of Palma de Mallorca at the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta. However Consuelo León Llorente and María Molina maintain in their book, Infanta Cristina, that they met in 1992. They married in Barcelona on 4 October 1997. The couple have four children, all born at Teknon Medical Centre in Barcelona: Juan (born 29 September 1999); Pablo (born 6 December 2000); Miguel (born 30 April 2002); and Irene (born 5 June 2005). As is social custom in Spain, Urdangarin had often been accorded the male form of his wife's title with the courtesy title of Duke of Palma de Mallorca since his marriage. Cristina would lose this title in 2015.

The family lived in Barcelona from 1997 until 2009, where Urdangarin was director of planning and development for Motorpress Ibérica and a founding partner of Nóos Consultoría Estratégica. From 2009 to 2011, they lived in Washington, D.C., where he worked for Telefónica. In August 2013, Urdangarin remained in Barcelona to stand trial, while his wife and children moved to Geneva, Switzerland, to work with the Caixabank Foundation. On 24 January 2022, Cristina and Urdangarin announced their separation. The couple divorced in December 2023.