Princess Leonor has spent years moving around in environments that are almost impervious to cameras.
The boarding school in the Welsh castle of St. Donat’s, surrounded by cliffs and with restricted access, was her first bubble away from home.
Then came the military academies, where military discipline and closed compounds did the rest.
In none of those settings was there much room for a candid photo. That changes in September.
The heiress will study Political Science at the Carlos III University, Getafe campus. An open space, with pedestrian areas, a shared cafeteria and hundreds of classmates with cell phones in their pockets. The paparazzi are already taking note, although some acknowledge that it won’t be as simple as it seems.
A photographer who has spoken with sources close to the matter has made it clear that interest in Leonor is not going to decrease, but rather the opposite, because at her age, with her profile and with all the expectation that surrounds her, the real media moment has just begun.
The funny thing is that the biggest risk doesn’t come from the professional paparazzi stationed at the door, but from the student next door. As a lawyer consulted by the Spanish portal Vanitatis points out in this regard, the university, although public, is not legally equivalent to the street.
Organic Law 1/1982 protects the image and privacy of any person in such spaces, including Leonor. Neither a photographer nor a classmate could publish images of her taken without consent, and the legal umbrella also covers conversations, habits, or any details of her private life on campus. It could even touch on national security issues.
And then there is the visible security, the usual one. There are clear precedents: when King Felipe was studying at the Autonomous University of Madrid, one of his classmates was his bodyguard, and it took him days to find out.
With Leonor, the protocol will be just as invisible and probably just as strict. The Royal House has shown that it knows how to act when necessary, and a few months ago it already took legal measures to protect the Princess of Asturias.
The fact that she is studying on an open campus does not mean that she will be unprotected, but rather that the game is played on a different board.