The Princess of Asturias opens at the Cervantes Institute with her first official solo act

The Princess of Asturias opened this afternoon with her first official solo act.

The setting for its debut has been the Instituto Cervantes, which this year commemorates the 30th anniversary of its foundation.

Leonor de Borbón, who turned 15 on October 31, has deposited two books in the so-called Caja de las Letras (the vault of the bank that formerly occupied the building), where the legacy of personalities of Spanish culture is kept.

The box of the heir to the Crown of Spain has been 2021, located between that of Miguel Delibes and that of Severo Ochoa, and his works, the copies of the Constitution and

Don Quixote

that he used for his first two readings in public.

It was also at the headquarters of the Cervantes Institute where the Princess of Asturias read the first article of the Constitution on October 31, 2018, the day she was 12 years old and commemorating the 40th anniversary of the approval of the Magna Carta by the Congress of the Deputies, in an act in which she was supported by the Royal Family and the heads of the main powers of the State and in which her voice could be heard in public for the first time.

On April 23, Mrs. Leonor and her sister, the Infanta Sofía, joined in the traditional reading of

Don Quixote

, on the occasion of Book Day, and sent a message of encouragement to the young people and of gratitude to the health workers although, on that occasion, due to the confinement imposed by the pandemic, they did so through a video recorded in La Zarzuela.

Upon arrival and leaving the headquarters of the Instituto Cervantes, the heir to the Crown has been cheered and cheered by several dozen people, whom she has timidly greeted, gathered behind a banner that, with the slogan

The future is Leonor,

was signed by Concordia Real Española, a group that in recent months has been very active in mobilizing its followers to support the Monarchy in public events.

During her visit, the eldest daughter of the Kings has been accompanied by the first vice president, Carmen Calvo;

the director of the institution, Luis García Montero;

and the Secretary of State for Cooperation, Ángeles Moreno.

Leonor de Borbón, who has worn the same dress with which she was seen last October in Oviedo at the Princess of Asturias Awards, has always been smiling, somewhat nervous, and, in Calvo's words, “comfortable and interested ”.

After listening to the explanations of the Secretary General of Cervantes, Carmen Noguero, who has presented her plans for digital transformation and the challenge of suspending face-to-face activities and "making the leap to the virtual world" at the beginning of the pandemic, the Princess has opened question time.

She congratulated those responsible for the institute for their technological tools and her website, which, as she said, both she and her classmates found it very useful;

and he has been interested in the Cervantes workers abroad who were unable to return to Spain and visit their families due to confinement.

"I would like to know how they are, if their situation has improved and if they have been able to come," he asked.

Noguero took the opportunity to thank the effort made by the Cervantes staff in these "so hard" months.

Before concluding the visit, he has leafed through a small sample of the bibliographic collection of the Cervantes Institute in the different co-official languages ​​of Spain (with works in Catalan, Galician and Basque) and has taken the official photo with the heads of the institution, which the they have cheered.

As a souvenir, he has taken three books, including an anthology by García Montero himself translated into Catalan.

The Vice President stressed that, with her presence at an event in which for the first time the King delegated his representation to the Princess of Asturias, she wanted to show "very expressly" the Government's support for Leonor de Borbón, who "occupies a important constitutional position ”.

Calvo stressed that the heiress is aware of her role and has described it as a "success" that she wanted to be linked to the promotion of language and culture.

Expansion of Spanish

The visit of the heiress to the Crown has served to launch the commemorative acts of the 30th anniversary of the founding of the Instituto Cervantes, which, under the motto

Creando hispanistas

;

It will include, among other activities, a world flamenco congress or an act in the Congress of Deputies.

El Cervantes was born on March 21, 1991 and its first director was Nicolás Sánchez-Albornoz.

Today it has 88 centers in 45 countries to spread culture in Spanish and teach the languages ​​of Spain.

The number of native Spanish speakers in the world reached 493 million in 2020, compared to 489 in 2019. Since the institute was born, “that number has increased by 70%,” according to García Montero.

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Leonor de Borbón follows in the footsteps of her father who, in 1983, also 15 years old, represented Spain for the first time in the commemoration of the 450th anniversary of the founding of Cartagena de Indias (Colombia), where he traveled accompanied by the then president Felipe González.

The intention of Felipe VI is that his eldest daughter will have an increasing institutional presence until, in October 2023, he solemnly swears the Constitution, coinciding with his coming of age.

Leonor de Borbón concludes ESO this year and, after the summer, will study high school at Atlantic College in Wales (United Kingdom), but the Casa del Rey has ensured that she will reconcile her studies abroad with "the progressive development of her commitments institutional institutions in Spain ”.

The King thus bets on the Princess of Asturias to project the image of the Crown into the future and leave behind the scandals caused by the accounts of Juan Carlos I in tax havens and the irregular vaccination of his sisters.