"You set very high values for me; it is a demanding task, which we try to instill in our daughters, the Queen and I." With these words, Felipe VI thanked this Monday the work of the children who won the contest What is a King to you? those whom he has received in the palace of El Pardo. The forty students from different Primary and ESO courses have presented their projects and have chatted with the King explaining each of his works.
The children's audience closed the edition of the last two years of the initiative, organized, for four decades, by the Spanish Institutional Foundation (FIES), now together with the Orange Foundation, in which schools from all over Spain participate, whose students present works , in various media, to explain how they believe what the King's work is.
The winners for Catalonia were Laia Rodríguez García, from the Espai Aura school, in Reus (Tarragona), and Clara Fàbrega Mallorquí from the La Vall school in Sant Quirze del Vallès. Laia, a 3rd year ESO student, dedicated an essay to the King in which, from the perspective of a 13-year-old teenager, she explains what the figure of the monarch and the institution he represents embodies for her. Clara, a 3rd year Primary student, made a craft in the shape of a scale that symbolizes, as she explains in her work, "the difficult role that the monarchical institution plays in contributing to better coexistence between the different citizens and territories."
In this new audience, the seventh since his proclamation, the King spent almost two hours with the winning boys and girls of the last two editions. Each of them has explained to him what they wanted to express with his projects, both crafts, writing, and even multimedia. Everyone has used their imagination to explain what the monarchical institution and the figure of the King mean to them, including the role of Princess Leonor who, in these last two editions of the contest and given her recent prominence, has also been included in some of the works presented.
In total, for each of the last two editions, 20 schoolchildren have been selected: 17 from the different autonomous communities, two from the autonomous cities of Ceuta and Melilla and one representative in the Special Education category.
In total, there have been almost 23,000 students who have presented their work in the last two editions of What is a King for you? Thus, in 2022, 11,886 schoolchildren participated in the contest - from 3rd, 4th, 5th and 6th of Primary, 1st and 2nd of ESO and special education up to 18 years of age -, from 1,098 centers throughout Spain. In 2023, there were 11,037 participating students, from 1,064 schools. .
In line with the digital transformation that is already included among school tools, in recent editions the presentation of works in new digital formats has been encouraged, such as storytelling (story or narrated story), music video, infographics, projects linked to robotics or 3D animation, along with other more traditional creations such as painting, sculpture, writing, etc.
