After heading down Avenida de los Reyes, Leonor de Borbón y Ortiz crossed the doors of the General Military Academy (AGM) in Zaragoza this Thursday, where she has begun the first of her three years of military training. At such a significant moment in her life, the Princess of Asturias was accompanied by her parents, Queen Leticia and King Felipe VI, who also trained as a soldier at this center in 1985.
Doña Leonor arrived shortly after the noon bell, very smiling, dressed in white pants, a blue shirt, sneakers, and a ponytail. Before the press, she confessed that she arrived “with a lot of desire” and admitted that she was also high on “nerves”. The King, in the summer uniform of the Army, accompanied him in her comment: “you have to be a little nervous.” In addition to the kings, the Infanta Sofía also wanted to accompany her sister to say goodbye to her at the Academy. The princess was received by the general director of the academy, General Manuel Pérez López.
This modality of entering military life with family members began a few years ago at the Academy. Until then, the cadets arrived alone at the General, which is how it is popularly known. However, it was considered appropriate to have a gesture of deference to the families, who for a decade have received a tour of the facilities on the first day.
After spending about twenty minutes in the Management building, it was time for the farewells, which took place in front of the access doors to the sports facilities. In that place, King Felipe VI explained to the press that the princess had been advised “to be very attentive and follow the advice of her companions.” She also recalled the “very fond memories” he has of her entering the Academy 38 years ago. For the King, “seeing her live the same situation is very exciting.” “She has all our encouragement for the first days that will be hard, so that she will overcome them with desire, patience and effort.”
Immediately afterwards, the princess hugged her father, her sister and her mother, a visibly moved Queen, as a farewell, and headed into the enclosure with a single suitcase to meet the requirements that all new students must meet ( delivery of the DNI, collection of suits, installation in your new cabin, etc.).
Nearby, a group of relatives of the new students who will be classmates of the princess cheered the king and queen and applauded when the monarch, accompanied by his wife and youngest daughter, came up to greet them. Shortly after, they boarded the two official cars that had brought them from the Zaragoza air base, to which they had traveled by plane, to start the return journey without their daughter.
It is not the first time that the princess goes to this center. She was already here last July 7, when she accompanied the Kings in the delivery of dispatches to the new officers. But if she came only to visit then, now she does so to stay as a Bourbon cadet lady, like the other 611 students who entered this Thursday (among them 140 women, 22% of the total).
It is expected that during the next year, the heiress to the Crown will receive similar treatment to the rest of her companions: she will sleep in a cabin with 12 beds with a shared bathroom and a closet and a desk as the only private spaces; and she will follow the same routines as the rest of her, which include waking up at 6:30 a.m., going to class from 7:45 a.m. to 2:20 p.m., eating the first and second courses that are given each day, or going to bed at 11:00 p.m.
The internment will also affect your appearance: you will change your elegant dresses for the regulation attire of the center (a work uniform, another for a walk and a third for gala, in addition to sportswear): and you will have to follow the strict rules that regulate appearance of the students, including those related to hair, jewelry -a single pair of earrings without pendants- or makeup, which must be “discreet”.
With regard to leisure, like her classmates, outings are authorized from the second term from Friday at noon to Sunday night, as long as she meets the academic objectives and does not have maneuvers or is arrested. “The demand is high, and they have to learn to manage their time,” military sources acknowledged at the open house organized for the press yesterday Wednesday.
One of the sensitive points during their stay at the AGM will be how to combine respect for their privacy and the use of mobile devices, since a balance will have to be found between the right of students to communicate with people from abroad and preventing them from being leak indiscreet images that affect the heiress.
In training weeks, restrictions on its use will be highlighted, including its prohibition in class and during instructional exercises. Ideally, military sources assured, is that the devices are not used outside the cameras -posting images of the interior of the academy on social networks can be subject to disciplinary sanction-, and it is hoped that some more specific indication will be made to Eleanor’s classmates
What will be different from the rest of the teammates will be their training. As the future Captain General of the Three Armies, Casa Real and the Government have designed a specific study plan for her that will extend over the next three years. The objective, according to the decree approved by the Executive last March, is for her to have “complete preparation”, with a profile “both scientific and humanistic” and to endow her with “a mentality of improvement and effort”.
This plan contemplates that at the AGM I study two condensed courses in one year. In the first two weeks, the princess will address the “welcome, orientation and adaptation” phase that all students go through, in which they are explained what military life consists of, they are given basic equipment and receive the first training sessions and parade.
Once this welcome stage is over, the period of instruction and military training itself begins. Until she swears in the flag on October 7, Leonor will take first-year subjects and, after endorsing her commitment to give her life for military values, she will be regrouped with her second-year classmates. Likewise, during the 2023-2024 academic year, she will also study strictly military subjects in the Infantry specialty, the same one that her father, King Felipe VI, chose on her day.
After concluding her studies in the Aragonese capital in July 2024 with her appointment as Dama Ensign Cadet, the specific plan also contemplates that she continue with her training at the Marín Navy Academy (Pontevedra) and, the following year, at the Air of San Javier (Murcia).
