Sofía de Borbón Ortiz, the youngest daughter of the Kings, turns 15 this Friday, an age that in many cultures marks the last frontier of childhood.
She will attend class like any other day and celebrate her anniversary in private.
But it will be the first time that she does it without her sister Leonor de Ella, who last Sunday returned to the UWC Atlantic College, the boarding school in Wales where she is studying the international baccalaureate.
The two daughters of Felipe VI and Queen Letizia have been very close since they were children.
More than friends, they are accomplices, according to those who have treated them closely.
Leonor, more reflective, has always protected her younger sister, spontaneous and restless;
while Sofía has supported her when she has had to assume her first responsibilities as her heir: the ceremony in which she received the Golden Fleece, in January 2018, or her first speech,
at the delivery of the Princess of Asturias awards in October 2019 in Oviedo.
They both practice horse riding and skiing, although Sofía is more athletic and her sister is more music lover.
One is from Real Madrid (the youngest) and another from Atleti (the oldest), but it does not seem that this is a reason for a dispute.
For years it was easy to confuse them.
Blonde and cheerful, of a similar height, they shared a school —Santa María de los Rosales, in Aravaca (Madrid), a mixed private center where their father, Felipe VI, also studied— and a summer camp in the United States.
Sitting next to each other, they participated in the choral reading of Don Quixote in April 2020, which was held virtually due to the pandemic.
And on July 14, for the first time without their parents, they went to the Hayedo de Montejo, in Madrid, to participate in the European Environment Day, with thirty young people of 11 different nationalities, and plant half a dozen trees.
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The loneliness of the infanta Sofía when starting the school year for the first time without her sister Leonor
But the paths of the two sisters have begun to fork.
And not only because Leonor has gone to study abroad;
while Sofia is in third year of ESO at the usual school.
As the date on which the Princess of Asturias will turn 18, on October 31, 2023, and will swear the Constitution before the Cortes approaches, the House of the King has accentuated the leading role that corresponds to her as heir to the throne.
Before returning to Wales, last Sunday, the Princess of Asturias went, on April 20, to a secondary education institute in the Madrid town of Leganés to attend some talks on cybersecurity for teenagers.
It was her second solo act, after the visit she made in March 2021 to the Cervantes Institute, on the occasion of the institution's 30th anniversary.
Taking advantage of Leonor's vacations, the two sisters went with their parents, on the 16th, to a reception center for Ukrainian refugees in Pozuelo de Alarcón, in Madrid, but all the cameras focused on the Princess of Asturias, who wore a shirt with traditional Ukrainian embroidery, as his mother had done at the beginning of the invasion, while the infanta Sofía was in the background.
Princess Leonor and Infanta Sofía, during their visit to the Sierra de Tramuntana, in Mallorca, last summer.
Clara Margais (Cordon Press)
Sofía owes her name to her paternal grandmother, Queen Sofía of Greece, although her godmother was her maternal grandmother, Paloma Rocasolano.
Being the firstborn marks the life of any person, but in the Royal Family it means being or not being.
If Sofia had been born male, she would have generated a constitutional conflict, since the Magna Carta grants primacy to men in the line of succession, despite outlawing any form of discrimination based on sex.
Being born a woman a year and a half after her sister relegates her to the status of an infanta, although her parents have educated her in the idea that the Crown that her sister will inherit is not a privilege, but rather a servitude that she must help her cope with. .
Raised in a family that has suffered painful ruptures —the estrangement from her aunts, the departure of her grandfather, whom she has not seen in person for 21 months— she will surely take great care in taking care of the strong ties that unite her with her sister .
Infanta Sofía, in the arms of Queen Letizia on the day of her presentation to the media.
Gorka Lejarcegi (Gorka Lejarcegi)
Sofia will not be educated to reign.
She will not have to undergo military training like Leonor, the future captain general of the three armies.
The Kings want her to have a profession and she can enjoy economic independence in the future.
But without forgetting that she is the second in the line of succession and that one day she could have to assume the throne due to the death, incapacity or resignation of her sister.
That is the destiny of an infanta: to prepare for a day that she fervently wishes will never come.
