Intense week for Princess Leonor. A month and a half after her arrival in Spain, after graduating from the International Baccalaureate in Wales, in the next five days she stars in three consecutive acts of special institutional relevance. This Tuesday she, together with the Infanta Sofía, will be at Cala Montjoi, in Roses, where, in the recently inaugurated elBulli1846 museum, she will participate in a creativity workshop given by Ferran Adrià; The following day, together with the King and Queen and her sister, she will attend the events scheduled by the Fundació Princesa de Girona in Caldes de Malavella. On Friday, again with the King and Queen, the Princess will enter the General Military Academy of Zaragoza for the first time, to accompany the King in delivering dispatches to the new officers and have a first contact with the stage where in August it will begin his military training.
This Tuesday’s visit to the elBulli1846 museum, in Roses, is the second for the Princess and the Infanta to Girona, after visiting the Dalí museum in Figueres just a year ago. On this occasion, the province of Girona will also be the scene of the FpdGi awards ceremony, whose delivery ceremony will take place at the Camiral hotel, located in Caldes de Malavella, while last year it had to be held in Cornellà.
Princess Leonor and Infanta Sofía, in addition to touring the facilities of the Cala Montjoi museum, will share a meeting-workshop, together with a group of young participants in the programs of the Princesa de Girona Foundation on Innovation, Teamwork and Creativity, taught by Ferrán Adrià and the elBulli1846 team. In the workshop, the participants will discover some of the most important milestones of El Bulli and learn how the systematization of innovation was applied to change the paradigm of the culinary world and turn this restaurant into the world gastronomic epicenter.
With the visit of the princess and her sister to elBulli1846, in addition to focusing on the center created by Ferran Adrià to promote the innovative spirit, share gastronomic knowledge and safeguard the legacy of what was once the best restaurant in the world, the aim is to highlight the importance of the initiatives of the Catalan civil society and highlight the interest of the Royal House in maintaining ties with Girona, despite the difficulties derived from the position of the political formations and leaders linked to the process that since 2017 have shown their rejection of the presence of the royal family.
This Monday, the self-styled Antimonarchical Coordinator of the Gerund Regions has called a demonstration this Wednesday in Caldes de Malavella against the presentation of the prizes of the Fundación Princesa de Girona (FPdGi). ERC and Junts, with its two candidates for Girona in the general elections, Montse Bassa and Marta Madrenas (former mayor of Girona), have participated in an appearance to announce this mobilization, in which the CUP has also been present deputy Mireia Vehí.
The elBulli1846 museum, which opened on June 15, is located in the same place where the restaurant was opened, to which new buildings have been added. It is made up of four different spaces, on the outside there are several facilities where homage is paid to the Bullinianos who made the history of elBulli possible and the Sapiens Methodology is presented, a proprietary methodology developed to understand that culminates in the first encyclopedia of restoration cuisine in the West, the Bullipedia. The elBulli1846 museum will host, as part of the elBullifoundation initiatives, the holding of research and dissemination workshops.
On April 26, 2004, shortly before their wedding, the then Prince of Asturias and his fiancée Letizia Ortiz were having dinner at El Bulli and Ferran Adrià, together with Juan Mari Arzak, was in charge of preparing the menu that was served at the dinner that on May 21, 2004 was offered at the El Pardo palace to the guests at the royal wedding.
On Wednesday, in the presence of the King and Queen, the central events organized by the FPdGI will take place at the Camiral de Caldes de Malavella hotel, which will have a prologue this Tuesday when the Princess, accompanied by the Infanta Sofía, will preside over, for the first time, a work meeting, where they will learn first-hand about the experiences of twenty young people who have actively participated in the programs promoted by the Foundation to help young people in their training and professional development.
On Wednesday morning, on the same stage, Leonor and Sofía will attend a workshop-concert by AmplificARTE, a music and education project promoted by Art House Academy, and the presentation of the KPMG report “Paths that converge: young people and companies facing the challenge of talent”; Later, together with the Kings, they will hold a meeting with the winners of previous occasions.
In the afternoon, the awards ceremony will take place for the violinist María Dueñas; the engineer and founder CEO of Open Cosmos, Rafael Jordá; to the Doctor in Biomedicine and professor at Yale, Marc Schneeberger Pané; to the art therapist and founder of the Palliative Art Foundation, Silvia Fernández Cadevall and to the CEO and co-founder of the Kidogo child care network, Sabrina Habib. Five young talents who, from different fields, work to solve some of the great current challenges such as climate change, emotional well-being, the prevention of obesity, the need to promote music as a universal language or the promotion of equal opportunities .
The FPdGi has been forced to look for alternative scenarios and resort to private initiative to hold the main events. The lack of collaboration of those responsible for the Girona city council, including the declaration of Felipe VI as persona non grata, have prevented, for the last five years, both the awarding of the prizes and the calling of the rest of the activities organized by the foundation, including the stay of the royal family, in the city that gives its name to the historical title of the heirs of the Crown of Aragon, which Leonor holds together with those of Duchess of Montblanc, Countess of Cervera and Lady of Balaguer.
From 2009 to 2017, the events took place at the Girona Auditorium and in 2018, due to the refusal of the city council to cede the facilities, the awards ceremony was held at Mas Marroch, a hotel complex in Vilablareix, property of the Roca brothers, and the workshops, in the Camiral hotel. In 2019, with the excuse of the tenth anniversary of the Fundació and after the lack of collaboration from the representatives of the Catalan institutions, the awards moved from Girona to Barcelona; in 2020 they were suspended due to the pandemic; in 2021 they continued in Barcelona and last year they were held in Cornellà.
