Princess Leonor, heir to the Spanish throne, swears allegiance to the Constitution
The heir to the Spanish throne, Princess Leonor, swore allegiance to the Constitution on Tuesday, her 18th birthday, in a pompous ceremony in the Spanish Parliament, from which she can legally succeed Felipe VI as head of state.
Leonor de Borbón, accompanied by her father King Felipe VI, her mother Queen Letizia and her sister the Infanta Sofía, took the oath in a special session of the Cortes, a formality her grandfather Juan Carlos I completed in 1969, during Franco's dictatorship, and Felipe VI in 1986, in democracy.
"I swear to faithfully perform my duties, to keep and uphold the Constitution and the laws, to respect the rights of citizens and the autonomous communities and to be faithful to the King," said Leonor with one hand on the same copy of the Constitution on which her father took the oath.
Dressed in a white suit, the princess received a standing ovation for several minutes after her oath in the Hemicycle of Parliament.
The ceremony was watched on giant screens in Madrid's central Puerta del Sol and elsewhere in the Spanish capital.
Around the parliament, a crowd of supporters waved Spanish flags in support of him.
In Spain, a parliamentary monarchy, the constitution stipulates that a male has preference to inherit the crown, but Leonor has no male siblings.
King Juan Carlos I, who was dogged by scandals in the latter part of his reign and abdicated in 2014 and moved to Abu Dhabi in 2020, was not present at the ceremony.
He will, according to press reports, take part in the family celebration at the El Pardo palace on the outskirts of Madrid.
Nor did the representatives of the parties that concentrate republican sentiment, the Catalan, Basque and Galician independentistas, and part of the radical left, attend.
"Neither monarchy, nor constitution. Democracy. Freedom. Republics", said the pro-independence parties in a manifesto on Tuesday, which they said represented "the feelings of millions of people (...) who neither recognise nor support the Spanish monarchical regime".
Three of the government ministers belonging to the radical left-wing platform Sumar, members of republican parties, did not attend the ceremony.
Socialist Pedro Sánchez, the outgoing prime minister who is currently negotiating a new government to stay in power, for which he needs the votes of the Catalan and Basque pro-independence supporters, did attend.
Unlike Juan Carlos, the princess of Asturias is a popular figure in a country where the debate over the monarchy is perennial.
After attending primary and secondary school in Madrid and the UK respectively, Leonor recently began three years of military training, as did her father.
