Leonor de Borbón has many intense periods ahead of her, but the current month is, without a doubt, the first of them. After almost 18 years of a relatively peaceful life, or at least calm in the eyes of a girl or teenager, the Princess of Asturias faces a key month of October in her life.
To his album, made up until now of idyllic family pictures and some institutional events, in recent days images of his first weeks of military training at the Academy of Zaragoza have been added (including his visit on Friday to the Virgen del Pilar), which yesterday culminated with those of his flag oath. The emotion of some parents, the pride of the King, the satisfaction of the entire armed forces and the kind gaze of the citizens, accompanied the Princess in the first of the relevant events that she stars in this month.
The most transcendental ceremony of all that Leonor experienced until the moment in which she succeeded her father had a marked date: October 31, the day of her birth. It has not been easy to comply with the tradition, of a single precedent, but tradition, that the heir swears in the Constitution on the same day of his coming of age. The political class, that companion not always loyal to the Crown, organized her electoral calendar without taking into account the date of Leonor's swearing-in before the Cortes. In the end, although the future investiture has not yet been completed and the Government is still in office, the Cortes will be fully operational, since even if there were early elections, they would not be dissolved until November 27. Once the test is passed, Leonor will be able to continue in her father's footsteps and swear the Magna Carta on the same day as her 18th birthday, as Felipe VI did on January 30, 1986.
What the ceremony will not be similar to is the absence of his grandfather. When Felipe de Borbón was sworn in as heir, the Count of Barcelona attended the ceremony; but, on this occasion, King Juan Carlos, self-exiled in Abu Dhabi since the summer of 2020, will only attend the family celebration that will take place after the institutional events. After the ceremony in Congress, an event will take place in the Royal Palace with the imposition of the Collar of the Order of Charles III on the princess (the highest decoration of the State) and a meal attended by representatives of the powers of the State.
The family celebration, which is only known to take place in the Pardo palace, but not whether it will be on the night of the 31st or the next day, November 1, has been the solution agreed upon between Zarzuela and the king. Juan Carlos. Since he went into self-exile, any of the agreements between both parties tend to be equally unsatisfactory for one and the other. La Zarzuela would always like less, and King Juan Carlos, more. The normalization of relationships, both family and institutional, is still a chimera.
In addition to the high symbolic value of the oath of the Constitution before the Cortes Generales (representatives of popular sovereignty), meeting in the Congress chamber, that same October 31 the hypothetical regency of Queen Letizia ends, a constitutional prerogative that It would have been launched if the incapacity or death of the King and the minority of the Princess of Asturias coincided.
And Asturias will be, between October 19 and 21, the scene of the ceremonies and events surrounding the delivery of the Princess of Asturias awards. It will be the only occasion in which Leonor speaks at the different events she will attend this month and it is expected that, although she is still a little over a week away from coming of age, her speech to the winners, among which will be the actress Meryl Streep and the writer Haruki Murakami, is especially significant and the first, truly, on her way to begin defining her role as crown princess.
Between yesterday's swearing-in at the General Academy of Zaragoza and before the ceremonies in Oviedo and the swearing-in in the Cortes, Princess Leonor also plans to attend the events on October 12, but not parading as a cadet, but on the platform alongside the Kings and also, for the first time, at the reception at the Royal Palace. Her participation with her unit in the parade is postponed until any of the Armed Forces Day celebrations that coincide with her military training, which began a little over a month ago and will conclude in July 2026.
Leonor will be the queen during this month of October, but when it is over she will once again be nothing more, and nothing less, than the Princess.
