Royal Fetes and Photo Ops

Before the Bitburg controversy broke, White House aides saw Ronald Reagan's trip to Europe as a pleasant presidential peregrination filled with photo opportunities. His ten-day itinerary includes both statecraft and diplomatic theater: a state visit to West Germany, the economic summit meeting in Bonn, a royal fete in Spain, a speech before the European Parliament in Strasbourg, high-level meetings in friendly Portugal. Reagan's theme will be "accentuate the positive," and in his remarks and speeches he will emphasize the 40 years of peace, amity and (relative) prosperity since V-E day.

Air Force One will touch down in Germany on Wednesday morning. Prior to the summit sessions on Friday and Saturday, Reagan will be officially welcomed at the imposing Villa Hammerschmidt and partake of an intimate dinner with Chancellor Helmut Kohl and other foreign leaders at Schloss Falkenlust. Reagan's meetings with the summit participants at the Palais Schaumburg will include a working lunch to consider political issues. After visiting BergenBelsen on Sunday, Reagan and Kohl will fly to Bitburg, 300 miles to the southwest.

Nancy Reagan, meanwhile, will leave her traveling companion for a side trip to Italy to pursue her antidrug crusade. On Friday she will attend a luncheon in her honor at the Quirinale palace and then pay a call on a residential drug-treatment center outside Rome. The next day she will have a private audience with the Pope to discuss drug abuse, followed by a tour of the * Pauline and Sistine chapels. She is scheduled to return to Bonn in time for the summit's windup dinner on Saturday night.

When Reagan arrives in Madrid on May 6, he will probably be greeted by a host of anti-American demonstrators ranging from Trotskyite Communists to Spain's version of the German Greens. Because of security concerns, the President will confine his visit to the west side of Madrid, where the royal palace and Prime Minister's residence are located. On May 7, he will take a constitutional around the garden of El Pardo palace with King Juan Carlos and hold talks with Prime Minister Felipe Gonzalez. The leaders may discuss Gonzalez's campaign to get Spain into NATO and the Prime Minister's reservations about U.S. policy in Central America. The King and Queen Sophia are to be hosts at a state dinner that night.

Next stop is Strasbourg, where Reagan is to deliver the keynote speech on V- E day before the European Parliament. In a lyrical ode to friendship and freedom, he plans to celebrate the survival and triumph of democracy in Western Europe after it was almost snuffed out during World War II. Strasbourg, however, is not without its own petty imbroglios. Reagan was initially invited to lunch by French President Francois Mitterrand, but when the European Parliament's president, Pierre Pflimlin, a longtime opponent of Mitterrand's Socialists, issued Reagan an official counterinvitation, a miffed Mitterrand withdrew his.

Reagan will receive a warm reception in Lisbon, his last stop. Prime Minis ter Mario Soares, a passionate anti-Communist, considers himself a "very good friend" and has resolutely defended U.S. policy in Central America. Aside from talks with Soares, Reagan is scheduled to address the Portuguese parliament. While the White House is comfortable with Portugal's politics, it is uneasy about security arrangements; some 400 U.S. agents are reportedly being brought in to help with the largest security operation ever attempted by Portugal. On May 10, after viewing a horse show at the Queluz palace, an undoubtedly weary traveler, surfeited with ceremony and controversy, will flash his signature wave and board Air Force One for the eight-hour flight home.