Just over a month before completing her military training at the General Air Academy (AGA), Princess Leonor received this Wednesday the highest distinctions of the Region of Murcia: the Gold Medal of the autonomous community and the Gold Medal of the Regional Assembly. In addition, she was named Adoptive Daughter of San Javier, the municipality on the shores of the Mar Menor where the AGA is located, and where she was also awarded its municipal Gold Medal. “Today I symbolically close a stage that has been essential for me. I assure you that I am not the same person,” said the Princess of Asturias.
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The future queen only spoke at the end of the morning, at the San Esteban Palace in Murcia, the seat of the regional government presidency, in the third of the institutional acts in which she participated to receive the awards. There, dressed in her Air Force military uniform, President Fernando López Miras awarded her the Gold Medal of the Region of Murcia, which is the highest institutional recognition granted by the autonomous community. All kinds of personalities from the autonomous community attended the event, from political and military authorities to singers, athletes, or influencers. About 200 people in total were able to witness it live, while others, including neighbors and onlookers, waited on the street for Leonor de Borbón, who greeted the neighbors for about ten minutes before entering the institutional event. There, she expressed words of recognition for the Armed Forces in general, and referred to the Military Emergency Unit (UMU), which since last night has been deployed in the Region of Murcia to try to extinguish a fire that has already burned about 177 hectares in the Garres and Lages district, in the municipality of Murcia.
It was not the only nod to the autonomous community, where she said she feels like “one more cowboy of the A3,” in a reference to the name of the latest album by the Cartagena group Arde Bogotá. Now that she is finishing her training at the AGA, she pointed out, she will miss the path she has traveled so many times, the “road to the sea,” as the band’s eponymous song says. In addition, she had words of remembrance for the recently deceased mayor of Murcia, José Ballesta, entrusted herself to “la Morenica,” as the Virgin of Fuensanta, the city’s patron saint, is popularly known, and spoke about the “such unique geography and such fragile nature” of the Mar Menor, severely affected for years by pollution, and which she has had the opportunity to fly over and sail in these months.
The president of the autonomous community did not miss the opportunity to boast about the youth of the Region of Murcia, the community with the lowest average age in all of Spain (41.2 years, compared to the national average of 45.3), and praise those young people who, like Leonor, he said, strive and commit, take on responsibilities and identify with the values she conveys.
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Before receiving the Gold Medal of the Region, the Princess of Asturias was also awarded this morning the Gold Medal of the Regional Assembly, which is based in Cartagena. That first event of the morning was brief, barely 20 minutes: after greeting the spokespersons of the parliamentary groups, she received the distinction and signed in its Golden Book. Afterwards, she traveled by car to San Javier, the second stop of this tour of distinctions, where she also spent some time greeting the neighbors and onlookers who were waiting for her in the Town Hall square. It is in this municipality on the shores of the Mar Menor that her visit generated the most popular expectation, although the princess has been residing there since last September 1, when she began her training at the General Air Academy (AGA). In these nine months, Leonor de Borbón has hardly been seen outside the academy, where she entered as a student ensign along with 73 other classmates, in what is her third and final year of military training. Previously, she attended the General Military Academy of the Army in Zaragoza, the Naval School of Marín (Pontevedra), and the Navy training ship Juan Sebastián Elcano.
At the Air and Space Force academy, she has followed a personalized study plan that has included theoretical and practical training in flight simulators before piloting the Pilatus PC-21 aircraft, the AGA’s training plane. Her first solo flight in that aircraft took place on December 18, 2025. During this year of training, she has also piloted other aircraft such as the Northrop F-5 fighter jet last April in Talavera la Real (Badajoz), and has passed the basic parachuting course that she completed at the Méndez Parada Military Parachuting School, located at the Alcantarilla Air Base, where she made her first jumps this week, according to information released by the Royal Household. Neither her father, Felipe VI, nor her grandfather, Juan Carlos I, had taken this specialized course during their training in San Javier. They did receive the municipality’s Gold Medal in their day, and are also Distinguished Sons of the same.
Leonor is scheduled to complete her training at the AGA on July 10, where she will receive the Grand Cross of Aeronautical Merit (she already has the military and naval ones) with a white distinction. Starting in September, she will begin her university studies in Political Science at the public Carlos III University in Madrid.
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