Princess Leonor Completes Elite Paratroop Training

The heir to the Spanish throne, Princess Leonor has been undertaking eltite military training including paratroop jumping and learning how to fly Spanish military aircrafts.

The latest training has been held in the Acantarilla Air Base, in Murcia.

This year she has been taking diverse roles including completing her second solo flight in a Pilatus PC-21 training aircraft and taking part in training other cadets during the Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape (SERE) exercises.

She has reportedly become the first member of Spain’s royal family to train as a paratrooper. King Felipe VI, her father, and Juan Carlos I, her grandfather, never took on such training while they served, according to reports.

Princess Leonor finished the Basic Parachuting Course at the Mendez Parada Military Parachuting School, part of her training at the General Air and Space Academy (AGA) in San Javier.

She qualified to carry out automatic, static-line jumps alongside nearly 50 classmates, the same standard required throughout Spain’s armed forces.

The training included a night-time descent from above 400 metres (1,300 feet), among the riskiest stages of her instruction.

The Spanish Royal Household said in a statement on 2nd June: “The Princess of Asturias has completed the Basic Parachuting Course at the Mendez Parada Military Parachuting School, at the Alcantarilla Air Base (Murcia).

“Following the training, in May she made her first parachute jump in automatic mode, as well as subsequent ones, one of them at night.”

Having passed, she was awarded a diploma along with the Rokiski, a badge showing outstretched wings around a parachute.

Her time in uniform will end within weeks, and in September she is due to start a Political Science degree at Madrid’s Carlos III University.