The official visit to Ceuta changed key in the afternoon, from palace ceremony to classroom chatter. After a morning of handshakes, flags and the Key to the City, King Felipe VI and Queen Letizia travelled to the Manzanera neighbourhood to visit the CEIP Vicente Aleixandre, a public school where more than 140 children between the ages of 3 and 12 learn side by side. It was, by every account, the visit within the visit – the part of the day the city will talk about at kitchen tables long after the motorcade has gone.
The Royal Household told the story on its official Instagram account, @casareal.es, in two posts. A carousel published at 10:45 showed the couple touring the school, and a reel followed at 13:13 with the wider picture: a school that educates its pupils in a multicultural environment, built on respect for the different backgrounds its children bring through the gate each morning. Before any classroom, though, there were the neighbours. The King and Queen first greeted the residents who had gathered near the school in Manzanera, because in this couple’s diary the street always comes before the schedule.
A big red book, and what it teaches
The photograph that leads the carousel deserves a long look. The King, in his dark navy suit and patterned blue tie, and the Queen, still in the textured blue-grey jacket of the morning, are gathered with a teacher around an enormous red book propped on a wooden stand. Its cover reads “La Constitucion de Nuestro Cole” – the Constitution of Our School – and the cartoon children on it carry the words that matter: “Nuestros Derechos” and “Y Deberes”, our rights and our duties. It is a school-made book, built by the community it describes, and the royal couple lean over it with the concentration usually reserved for state papers. There is something quietly wonderful in that. A constitution drawn by children, read seriously by a King.
That image captures the educational idea at the heart of Vicente Aleixandre. Citizenship here is not an abstract lesson saved for older pupils. It is drawn, coloured, bound in red card and read aloud from the earliest years, so that rights and responsibilities arrive together, as they should. Readers who followed the morning welcome in Ceuta, with its crowd scenes and the Key to the City, will recognise the thread: a city explaining itself to its guests, this time through its youngest citizens.
Into the classrooms
The tour took the King and Queen into several classrooms across the early years and primary stages. In an early childhood classroom they greeted children of 4 and 5, pupils who are educated, in the Household’s words, in a multicultural environment founded on respect for different traditions. In a third-year primary classroom, the couple learned at close quarters about MUS-E, the programme that weaves the arts into everyday teaching, using creativity as a route into learning rather than a reward at the end of it.
They also met the educational community – the teachers and staff who run a school of more than 140 pupils and who, the Household noted, pay special attention to accompanying each pupil and supporting the families behind them. That accompaniment is the school’s quiet distinction. Small schools in close-knit neighbourhoods know their children by name, by family and by circumstance, and Vicente Aleixandre has built its reputation on exactly that knowledge.
Why a school visit carries weight
Royal diaries are full of receptions, and receptions are easily forgotten. Classrooms are different. When a head of state sits where an eight-year-old sits and asks how art fits into a maths morning, the visit validates the daily work of teachers whose efforts rarely make the news. The numbers suggest the public felt it too: by check time the school reel had drawn about 16,800 likes and 285 comments, and the carousel about 7,100 likes, on an account followed by more than 1.43 million people – a remarkable response for a neighbourhood school on an autumn afternoon.
There is a European pattern here worth noting. Earlier the same day, another royal couple were opening a nursery built for their principality’s youngest residents, the story we told in Monaco’s new Creche Ida inauguration. In Monaco it was a new building; in Ceuta it was a big red book. The settings differ, but the message is the same: the youngest members of a community are worth a royal afternoon.
Ceuta began its royal day with a key and ended the school portion of it with a storybook constitution, a room full of four-year-olds and an arts lesson for eight-year-olds. The pupils of Vicente Aleixandre will remember the day the King read their book. The King and Queen, one suspects, will remember it too.
Photo: @casareal.es
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