FILE – Spain’s Princess Leonor, left, and King Felipe VI attend the military parade on the national holiday known as “Dia de la Hispanidad” or Hispanic Day, in Madrid, Spain, Thursday, Oct. 12, 2023. Spain’s heir to the throne, Princess Leonor, is scheduled to swear allegiance to the nation’s Constitution on turning 18 years old on Tuesday, Oct. 31, 2023, in a gala event that will make her eligible to be queen one day.
Banners with her picture decorated lampposts along several of Madrid’s main streets. Many official buildings were festooned with drapes and tapestries for the ceremony, which was to be shown on national TV and on several giant screens set up in the capital.
The royal family is still trying to recover its former good name in Spanish society and make up for the scandals involving several family members, most notably Juan Carlos, 85, who abdicated in 2014, left Spain for Abu Dhabi in 2020 amid a cloud of financial scandals. The investigations in Spain and Switzerland have since been dropped while he won another headtopics.com
Felipe and Letizia have recovered a lot of the institution’s good image but for many in Spain the monarchy is still questioned given that it was former dictator Gen. Francisco Franco who put Juan Carlos on the throne, bypassing his father and natural heir, Juan de Borbón. Spain hadn’t had a royal family since Alfonso XIII went into exile with the coming of the Second Republic in 1931, five years before Franco and other generals staged a coup.