Princess Leonor trained as a soldier. She’s studying political science. Recent polling on Spain’s monarchy is a mess. None of those three facts cancel each other out.
As an Amazon Associate, Crown & Court earns from qualifying purchases.
Forty point four percent. That’s what one major Spanish survey found last year when it asked whether people would rather have a republic than a monarchy. Republic won. Remember that number.
Now here’s a different number. Fifty-two percent. A separate poll, four months later, found a majority still preferring the monarchy outright. Pick whichever number makes you feel better. That’s the actual problem.
Let’s be honest about this. Spain’s pollsters do not agree with each other. One survey in January 2024 had monarchy support at 58.6 percent. One in June 2025 had it at 35.5 percent, with republic ahead by five points for the first time in the series. One in October 2025 split the difference. Different firms. Different methods. Wildly different headlines. That is not a footnote. That is the story.
What they do agree on is the direction nobody at the palace wants to talk about. Spaniards born between 1975 and 1995, the actual working-age core of the country, lean republican. Not by a landslide. By enough. The younger you go, the worse it gets for the Crown. The institution is not collapsing. It is aging out of its own fan base.
Meanwhile, Leonor herself tests well. Genuinely well. One poll put her personal approval at 8.1 out of 10, the best-rated royal in the family, ahead of her own father. She’s been dressing the part flawlessly all year, and the public has noticed. Even a chunk of declared republicans give her decent marks for taking the job seriously.
This is exactly the gap that should worry the palace more than any single number does. The heir can be popular. The institution can still be losing. Those are not the same poll, and treating them as the same poll is how you get blindsided.
Spain’s communications strategy right now is simple. Put Leonor in front of cameras. Let her parachute, let her graduate, let her say something modest and competent in two languages. It is working, as far as it goes. But pageantry is not an argument. A well-liked princess is not a counterargument to forty percent of the country wanting a different system entirely. She is a distraction from that argument, which is a different thing, and a more fragile one.
Juan Carlos: Steering Spain from Dictatorship to Democracy by Paul Preston is worth reading here, because it is a reminder that this monarchy’s entire modern legitimacy rests on one king making one set of choices in 1981. Inherited popularity is not the same thing as inherited legitimacy. Spain has tested that distinction before. It may be about to test it again.
I remain, reluctantly, in favour of constitutional monarchy as an idea. I am less and less convinced Spain’s version of it has actually closed the argument. The numbers don’t lie. They just won’t sit still long enough to agree on the verdict.
Daniel Harte is Crown & Court’s Opinion columnist. A political commentator and self-described reluctant monarchist, he has spent twenty years writing about the institution’s scandals, its failures, and the arguments its defenders would rather not have in public.
“The monarchy survives on myth. Let’s look at the facts.”
