With "great enthusiasm and normality" they await Princess Leonor at the Carlos III University of Madrid this Monday, when she will begin classes for the Political Science degree that she will study for the next four years, a university stage that she will have to make compatible with her institutional commitments as heir to the Crown.
One more student among the more than 4,000 who begin their first year on the same day at this public university on its different campuses in Madrid and where 16,000 young people study.
Of all of them, around 40 will share a classroom with the Princess of Asturias in the first year of this degree at the Faculty of Social and Legal Sciences, located on the Getafe campus (south of the Community of Madrid).
The course will begin on the verge of turning 21 after completing three years of military training in which the future head of State, who will have supreme command of the Armed Forces, has passed through the three Armies.
Their presence on the Getafe campus is expected with great enthusiasm but also normally, according to the vice-rector for Communication, Alejandro Melero.
Great display of security
Their attendance, however, will require a security deployment that will try to make the needs of the security forces compatible with the academic activity of the princess and her classmates, beyond the expectation that it will cause among the university community.
An expectation that will be experienced especially this Monday on the first day of class, when there will also be the presence of the media to bear witness to the princess's entry into her faculty.
Beyond the images that the media are taking on the first day, the Code of Good Practices approved by the Carlos III University in 2012 regulates the use of mobile phones, which is prohibited inside classes. Thus, this university center rule establishes that, "unless the professor expressly authorizes it, mobile phones may not be used during class," although it is allowed in the common areas of the campus.
This first day, according to university sources, classes will be dedicated to the presentation of the Political Science degree, focused on access to public administration and political analysis and containing subjects on constitutional and administrative law, history and political theory, sociology, humanities, Spanish, European and world politics, management and public administration.
Nadia is one of the students who begins her university studies on this campus this Monday, in her case the double degree in Business Administration and International Studies, and she is confident that despite the expectation and the fact that everyone has talked a lot about it, the students will see Princess Leonor "as another companion."
"In the end she also has to live her own university life as a student, not as if everyone only saw her as the princess. I think that university people will be able to see her as a companion, because she deserves that respect," this 18-year-old student maintains in a talk with some journalists, who does not rule out that there are young people who have chosen the degree in Political Science because it is the daughter of kings.
To be able to study this university degree at Carlos III in Madrid, the established cut-off mark for this course was 10,728 points out of 14. Leonor de Borbón submitted her application to take this degree through the procedure known as early admission, established for students who have studied and obtained the International Baccalaureate degree outside of Spain, as is the case of the princess, who completed her baccalaureate at the UWC Atlantic College in Wales.
Due to this procedure, UC3M cannot admit more than 8% of the students that enter each year, a percentage that represents just over 300 students, of which 20% are Spanish students.
The Carlos III University of Madrid, founded by Gregorio Peces-Barba in 1989, is among the best in the world in 10 academic fields, according to the Global Ranking of Academic Subjects (GRAS) 2024 published by Shanghai Ranking. Specifically, it occupies a prominent place internationally in Political Science, where it appears among the 300 best in the world.
