Spain’s Crown Princess Leonor celebrates her 18th birthday on October 31st. It is an important day for Spain’s monarchy. Unlike most 18-year-olds, King Felipe VI’s daughter is celebrating. (55) and Queen Letizia (51) celebrated their coming of age with highly official ceremonies, including an oath to the constitution.
For the ceremony on Tuesday morning, citizens from all over the country traveled to the capital Madrid to witness the grand entrance of Leonor of Borbón y Ortiz, Princess of Asturias. In the Chamber of Deputies of Congress, the heir to the throne swore on the same Bible as her father to respect the country’s laws and democratic institutions – an important symbolic commitment to democracy and constitutional monarchy.
Together with her parents and her younger sister Sofía (16) as well as mounted units of the Royal Guard, Leonor drove up to the Parliament building in the center of Madrid in a Rolls-Royce on Tuesday morning. Dressed in a snow-white trouser suit, she was received there by incumbent Prime Minister Perdo Sánchez.
In the Chamber of Deputies, Leonor finally took her oath with the words: “I swear to faithfully fulfill my duties, to uphold and ensure the Constitution and the laws, to respect the rights of citizens and the autonomous communities and to be loyal to the King.” Her father, King Felipe VI, made the same vow on his 18th birthday in January 1986.
The Crown Princess is first in line to the Spanish throne and will one day follow her father to the throne. He became the new Spanish king in 2014 after his father Juan Carlos I (85) abdicated due to numerous scandals. The ex-king lives in exile in Abu Dhabi and was not present at today’s ceremony.
Leonor is currently undergoing three years of military training, which is common for heirs to the Spanish throne. In May 2023 she completed her schooling at the International Baccalaureate boarding school UWC Atlantic in Wales.
