Princess Leonor and Infanta Sofía reappeared this Tuesday in Girona, on their second visit to the province from which the oldest title of Leonor, Princess of Asturias and Girona, was born. It is, however, the first time that the Heiress has set foot in the city, and she has done so during a visit to the offices of the Princess of Girona Foundation that arose from her own initiative, as reported by Zarzuela, and from which it has not been publicly known until it is over.
Casa Real thus avoids any kind of public exposure of the Princess in Girona, one of the pro-independence strongholds, governed by the CUP after the May 28 elections. The Princess left a message in a book that she was waiting for in the offices, in which she assured: “My sister Sofía and I are very happy to see the headquarters of the foundation that I preside in the city of Girona. And we thank the entire team for their dedication and effort. With our profound affect”.
After this visit without the press, of which only the Zarzuela photographer reported, the Princess and the Infanta went to ElBulli1846, the museum that Ferrán Adriá opened on June 15 to reflect on gastronomy and leave a trace of one of the restaurants that revolutionized Spanish gastronomy. With the visit of the Princess and the Infanta, this tourist spot on the Girona coast receives institutional support and an unquestionable public projection. The same thing happened last year, when the young women visited the Dalí museum in Figueres. However, despite the fact that it seems that the strategy to achieve institutional normality happens because the Heiress and her sister appear at tourist attraction points, the capital has been visited without a public summons.
In the road map to return to the cities that most supported the independence process, exposure of the Royal Family has been avoided and in the two days that the Head of State will spend in Girona there is no possibility of popular support or complaints. Thus, at half past three in the afternoon this Tuesday, Leonor and Sofía held a working meeting with the management team of the Princess of Girona Foundation, where they presented this year’s activity report. They did it at the Camiral hotel, in Caldas de Maravella, the same place where the Princess of Girona Awards will be delivered tomorrow, which is located several kilometers from the capital and where there can be no expressions of affection or protests against the Parliamentary Monarchy. .
After that meeting, the Princess and the Infanta -one in an orange dress by Lady Pipa and the other in a red jumpsuit by Sfera- went to ElBulli, where Ferrán Adriá and the ElBulli1846 team were waiting for them. To get to the museum you have to travel an hour by road from Girona to Roses. There, the chef’s foundation makes a bus -Bullibus- available to the public, which in 15 minutes travels a winding road to Cala Montjoi, in the heart of the Cap de Creus natural park, where the 4,000 square meters of land that ElBulli occupies extend. 1846. “It’s incredible,” said the Infanta about the cape where the museum stands. Doña Leonor, for her part, found the visit “very interesting.”
The Royal Family has known Ferrán Adriá for years. The Kings dined at his restaurant before getting married and the acclaimed cook was in charge, together with Juan Mari Arzak, of serving the dinner menu that was organized at the El Pardo Palace the day before the wedding. Doña Leonor and her sister have seen the table where her parents tried the menu.
The mayor of Girona, Lluc Salellas, from the CUP, encouraged the residents of the city to protest tomorrow against the visit of Princess Leonor. “As always and luckily, the people of Girona will take to the streets to show that this is a republican land, that they want the Bourbons away and that they aspire to be fully free,” he wrote on his Twitter account, along with the Image of the call for an anti-monarchist demonstration.
Tomorrow, the Royal Family has a busy schedule of institutional events related to the FPdGi that will culminate in the afternoon, when Princess Leonor will present the Foundation’s awards all at the Camiral hotel, in different spaces but without leaving the premises. It will be the fourth year that she presides over the ceremony, in which her parents and her sister will also be present. It will also be the year of the return of the Awards to Girona.
In July 2017 it was the last year that they could be delivered in the city auditorium. Months later, after the speech on October 3 in which Felipe VI called to order the people who had tried to bypass the constitutional norms, the consistory declared him persona nongrata and since then they have not rented public spaces for the awards ceremony. The Princesses of Girona were awarded in 2018 in a space donated by the Roca brothers and the following year, the first year that Princess Leonor participated, was held in Barcelona with the excuse of the tenth anniversary of the awards. Now the return to Girona is celebrated, although it was a visit of less than half an hour, without the press and announced after the fact.
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