After Spain won the women’s World Cup last year, the number of Spanish schoolgirls playing football shot up. Now something similar is happening, albeit for different reasons, in the military. Some put the rising number of female recruits down to “Leonormania”.
Princess Leonor, heir to the throne, recently completed 12 months at an army academy. Last week the “infanta” began a second year’s training in a naval school, to be followed by a third with the air force. Meanwhile, the number of women applying to join the ranks has risen by 12 per cent in the past year.
While the rise, partially attributed to Leonor, delights generals and the Spanish press, it belies a bigger issue confronting the country’s royalist wing: to what extent can
