Leonor de Borbón will once again be the figure that publicly embodies the succession stability of our country with the presidency of the new submission Princess of Asturias Awards on October 25. The heir to the Spanish Crown, according to article 57.2 of the Constitution, "shall have the dignity of Prince of Asturias and the other titles traditionally linked to the successor to the Crown of Spain". And what are these titles? In addition to Prince of Asturias, she is also Princess of Gerona, Princess of Viana, Duchess of Montblanc, Countess of Cervera and Lady of Balaguer.

This accumulation of dignities, which many Spanish citizens are probably unaware of or which may seem to them as stale nominations with outdated social touches, reflects on the other hand the richness of a long and rich trajectory linked to the peninsular history personified in the reigning lineages of its historical spaces shaped in the Age average. purpose The different monarchs of Aragon, Castile and Navarre at the end of the Middle Ages, following the custom initiated in England and France, endowed the heirs of their house with rents and an identity degree scroll , creating a series of dignities with the clear purpose of reinforcing the political and family power of their lineages.

Thus, in the Crown of Aragon the degree scroll of Marquis, first, and then Prince of Gerona (1351 and 1416); Count of Cervera (1351) as heir to the kingdom of Valencia; Duke of Montblanc (1387) for the inheritance of the principality of Catalonia and Lord of Balaguer to identify the succession in the kingdom of Mallorca. Similarly, in Castile the degree scroll of Prince of Asturias (1388) and in the kingdom of Navarre the Prince of Viana (1423) were created.

It is not easy to retain this not trivial information and that accompanies our conversations this weekend in the thread of the awards, nor is there room to detail on this occasion the difficulties and twists and turns that from the sixteenth century involved the use of some titles for the heirs of the house of Austria, overshadowed by the designation of Prince of these Kingdoms. Prince of Spain and the New World. The victory of the Bourbons in the War of Succession (170-1714), however, operated an important change for the members of their dynasty regarding the treatment of the heirs. The new juridical reality and the French sovereign models of Philip V, embodied in the Decrees of Nueva Planta (which suppressed the degree scroll of Gerona), ended up identifying Castile -simplifying a very complex historical-legal question-, with Spain. And with this, the dignity of the Principality of Asturias prevailed in the future. purpose A good example of this can be seen in some of the conflicts that took place in the 18th century in the old kingdom of Navarre, which continued to designate the Spanish heirs as princes of Viana; all with the aim of distancing itself from the Central Administration and defending some of its own rights.

Some time later, the Constitution of Cadiz (1812) formally rescued the degree scroll Spanish , but the rehabilitation of the others, fallen into disuse in previous centuries, did not take place. Even the petitions of the City Council of Gerona to Queen Isabel II in 1860 and 1862, requesting the restoration of the Aragonese degree scroll , or those of Viana for the Navarrese degree scroll in 1923, went unheeded. The decretal and constitutional tradition of the nineteenth century paid attention to the maintenance of the degree scroll of Prince of Asturias, which would be in force until the Withdrawal of the rights of the Crown by Alfonso XIII in favor of his son Juan de Borbón y Battemberg (1914). The inheritance thus fell to Prince Juan Carlos (1941); a child born in exile who did not use such dignity until his engagement to Sophia of Greece, on September 13, 1961. And curiously this time the heir was called Prince of Asturias, Gerona and Viana, since until then and by virtue of the agreements with Francisco Franco in 1947 he was only Prince of Spain.

Very few Spaniards knew that that man with dark circles under his eyes, after having spent the sleepless night of November 21-22, 1975 before his proclamation as king and being at the center of a process of transition to Democracy, was the defender of a project in which it was formally possible to appeal to the past as the foundation of the future. A past that offered sufficient legitimizing elements for the unity and continuity of a country hungry for renewal after Franco's death, with royal traditions that evidenced the historical richness and plurality. Although the new prince would be proclaimed heir to the Crown, Felipe, with "the degree scroll and the title of Prince of Asturias", little by little the popularity and consolidation of the monarchy at the end of the eighties and nineties opened the possibility of using the "other titles" mentioned generically in the Constitution. And although they do not prevail in the official regime of the titles of the Royal House (Gerona, Viana, Montblanc, Cervera and Balaguer), there is no doubt that not only Asturias but the rest are the obvious manifestation of a historical bequest above the current backlashes and fractures. A bequest that, whether we like it or not, speaks "titularly" of cohesion by itself.