Elionor, one more student?

BarcelonaThe student Leonor de Borbón y Ortiz has begun her political science degree this week at the Carlos III University of Madrid. While it would have been a truly groundbreaking message for the heir to the Spanish throne to study at any university outside of Spain's most central community, we will have to settle for the fact that she did not end up at a private university, as happened with her paternal cousins, and that they did not tailor a custom educational program for her and she is pursuing pre-established studies, like those taken by the rest of the students at that center. That is to say, that they did not do with her what they did with Felipe VI when he was a prince: they created ad hoc studies for him at the Autonomous University of Madrid to turn him into the prepared one.

It is curious how a person who must embody plurality in its maximum expression –and for this purpose she was sent to do her baccalaureate at the highly international UWC Atlantic College in Wales–, once in Spain, turns out to be less closely connected to internal plurality. Or rather: to a certain internal plurality. For example, the one that would have been conferred upon her by doing her degree at any Catalan university. In fact, the three best universities in Spain according to the U-Ranking are Catalan. It would have been a good recognition. It must be said that during her three years of military training she has indeed discovered the singularities of other territories of the State, such as Aragon, Galicia, and Murcia. Not coming to Barcelona has been a –new– missed opportunity to give her a truly plural profile and turn her into a more plausible Princess of Girona.

Hiding privilege, the evidence

But this self-limitation –which, by the way, is especially sad now that her aunt, Infanta Cristina, has a home again in the Catalan capital– has not prevented the most sycophantic press in the kingdom from sharpening their palms well by applauding indiscriminately in the chronicles of the university debut of the Princess of Asturias. Various media wrote that Leonor had started university "like just another student". There is no doubt that the leitmotif of Letizia's reign is for Leonor to be completely distanced from the image of privilege that has characterized all her predecessors and that has always ended up leading them to popularity crises. So much so that, to be more of the people, when there are meetings of the future queens of Europe, the Spanish heiress does not appear. It is for this reason that the "like just another student" must have been very welcome at the Zarzuela. But, of course, in the real world this phrase rings pathetically. The truth is that there hasn't been so little journalism seen since the Spanish national football team won the World Cup...

You have to be very daring to label Leonor as a student like any other. What I cannot quite calibrate is whether this disappearance of media critical sense is due to a heartbreaking buying into the headlines manufactured by the think tank of the palace to look good with the institution or the fact of living so completely disconnected from the real life of university students that the authors of these texts really think that the rest of the students at UC3M have a life like hers. If it comes to the worst, I wish it were the first reason. Because if it was the second, the profession will not be saved in any way.

Same?

To begin with, Leonor will not have to work during the four years that her degree lasts. Nor if she later pursues a master's degree, whether here or abroad. And they are certainly expensive. Both here and abroad. This does not make her at all equal to the nearly 50% of students surveyed last year by a study from the Vives Network, who said they worked while studying at university. Nor does it make her at all equal to the rest to have entered university following the early admission process (early admission), through which a very small percentage of students access the UC3M. Furthermore, in this access route, only two out of every ten students are Spanish. Here, the representative of all Spaniards has been very little Spanish. It is also not very mainstream to not have taken the PAU exams. Definitely, that certainly does not make her "just another student" at all. In fact, nothing would have made her more of a normal, ordinary student than taking the selectivitat, which is the most democratic filter we have today regarding higher education.

Nor does it make her equal to the rest of her peers who, for example, use private transport to get from home to university. From Palau to the university, it can take up to an hour and a half by public transport, and half an hour by car, a type of vehicle that nowadays not even some adults who have been working for years can afford. Will we laugh on the day they give us speeches against climate change? Or perhaps we will just cry? But well, after arriving at campus in only a third of the time it would take the rest, and without suffering the fatigue of having had to work, one could say that finally she will be just another student. But look at that, not even then!

Job placement

One of the greatest concerns for university students is knowing whether they will find a job, and if that job will be of good quality. In fact, knowing the job placement rates of university degrees and master's programs influences them when it comes to enrolling or not in studies that they might be passionate about, but with which they might end up precarious for life. Here, the student Leonor seems to also have a lot of ground gained with the family business, an opposition that she has passed since birth. An extra that does not make her just another student, in particular, nor just another citizen, in general. Not sharing an apartment with four other people in a ground-floor flat on the outskirts of the capital of her Habsburg ancestors or not having to ration her scholarship so that it lasts all year does not help much to make her able to seduce the people. Or at least to make this headline, so violent to people's intelligence, credible.

It does not make her equal to the rest that on the first day the rector, the vice-rector of students, and the dean of her faculty come out to greet her cordially. It also does not help her to be just another student that she is surrounded by a group of plainclothes security agents who are so easily identifiable, that some people applaud her, and that many take photos of her as she walks. But these things, poor thing, are not her fault. Surely, the fairest thing is to pity her for all of this. They are avatars rather inseparable from her destiny. Just like the press that sucks up to her father through her. A press that only seeks to help itself and that does Leonor no favors. The dreamed-of headline has been her worst ally. Among other reasons, because on social media they have had a field day with the "like just another student". Perhaps in this matter of being a meme she has indeed been well equalized with everyone else. Nowadays no one is spared. Luckily!