Leonor de Borbón has visited Catalonia twice, in the fall of 2019 and in the summer of 2021, on the occasion of the awards ceremony in Barcelona of the Fundació Princesa de Girona (FPdGi). Her third official visit, which will take place on Monday, will have a highly symbolic prologue this Sunday: the Princess of Girona, accompanied only by her sister, the Infanta Sofía, will be in Figueras to visit the Dalí Museum and hold a meeting with young . It will be the first time that the crown princess and the infanta Sofía know that Catalan territory.
The Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí is closely linked to the Crown and the Fundació Princesa de Girona. King Juan Carlos and King Sofia visited the Figueres museum on several occasions and, in 1982, the painter was awarded the title of Marquis of Dalí i Púbol. Also, Felipe de Borbón visited the museum as Prince of Asturias and Girona and, in November 2004, just married, he went with Letizia. Meetings of the FPdGi board of trustees have also been held in the Museum’s facilities and the Infanta Cristina is a member of the foundation that bears the name of the painter and his wife. The Princess and Infanta Sofía are expected to be in Figueres in the afternoon where, in addition to visiting the museum, they will hold a working session on the new FpdGi programs and a meeting with young participants. It is not ruled out that, previously, together with her parents they go to eat at a restaurant in the area.
Leonor’s first visit to Girona will take place in an emblematic city of the province, but not in the capital where since 2019 the events organized (including the awards ceremony) by the foundation baptized with the historical title of the heirs of the Crown of Aragon. The city of Girona was, since 2009, the scene of the conferences organized by the FPdGi but, in recent editions, as a result of the radicalization of the independence process, the protests and the declarations against the Crown by the representatives of the Catalan institutions, including the Girona city council, which in 2017 declared the then princes of Asturias “persona non grata”, made it difficult to hold the scheduled events in the city.
After the difficulties imposed by the Girona city council to rent the Auditori space to the Fundació, where the previous ones had taken place, the 2018 edition was held in the hotel facilities of the Roca brothers, in Vilablareix, and a hotel in Caldas de Malavella. In 2019, with the excuse of the tenth anniversary of the launch of the FPdGi, Girona and its province were definitively ruled out and the awards and other activities, in which Princess Leonor participated for the first time, took place in the month of November, at the Palau de Congresos de Catalunya in Barcelona, ??in the midst of a large security deployment, which forced the closure of access to the northern section of Diagonal, and acts of protest by pro-independence sectors.
In 2020, the main events of the FPdGi were suspended as a result of the pandemic and in July 2021, again under the presidency of Leonor de Borbón, they took place in the CaixaForum building in Montjüic, where a Joint delivery of the 2020 and 2021 edition awards.
After Sunday’s visit to the Dalí Museum, Princess Leonor and Infanta Sofía will travel to Barcelona, ??where they will meet with the King and Queen, to preside over the Princess of Girona Awards ceremony on Monday, in which Leonor will once again be protagonist. The heiress to the throne made her debut in 2019 at the delivery of these awards with a speech in four languages ??-Catalan, English and Arabic, as well as Spanish- with which she received a standing ovation. For this occasion, she has been rehearsing her intervention for days, in which there will undoubtedly be a message especially aimed at young people, the Foundation’s reason for being. The ceremony will be held in the auditorium of the Museu de les Aigües, a modernist building in Cornellà de Llobregat, and for the first time the juries have ruled in favor of five young women, in whom they have recognized empathy, commitment, determination, hope and courage .
The winners in this thirteenth edition are the actress, playwright and producer María Hervás, Arts and Letters award; the engineer Elisenda Bou-Balust, Company Award; the physicist and researcher Eleonora Viezzr, Scientific Research Award; the psychologist and social entrepreneur Claudia Tecglen, Social Award; and the defender of the environment and writer Trang Nguyen, International award winner. The names of the five winners were announced between the months of March and May of this year, consecutively, at the five stops of the Talent Tour, a tour that began in Malaga and ended in Girona, after passing through Guadalajara, Logroño and Palma, all cities in which a two-day agenda was developed, with talks and activities dedicated to promoting and recognizing young talent, and which concluded with two main events in which, always with the participation of the King or Queen, or both, the name of the winner in one category was announced. The Princess of Girona awards, endowed with 20,000 euros and a sculpture designed exclusively by Juan Zamora (Arts and Letters Award 2017), have the objective of positioning an entire community of young people who want to lead their personal and professional development and generate an impact positive
As a prelude to the awards ceremony, the FPdGi has organized a Code workshop (platform that teaches programming) for young people, in which Princess Leonor and Infanta Sofía will participate. Then the Kings and their daughters will hold a meeting with young people awarded in previous editions.
The Princess of Girona Foundation was born in 2009 with the vocation of consolidating the Crown’s ties with Catalonia and did so with the approval of the Zarzuela and promoted by four entities of Catalan civil society with deep roots in Girona, such as the Chamber of Comerç, Caixa Girona, la Caixa and the Gala-Salvador Dalí Foundation. For some years now, the FPdGi has changed its course to take the activities it carries out throughout the year to different cities in Spain.
