LEONOR de Borbon has not been given an easy ride at the General Military Academy in Zaragoza since she enrolled on September 5 – despite being the future Queen of Spain.

The Royal Household has released photos of the 17-year-old undergoing a gruelling bootcamp along with an in-take of young cadets.

Others capture the young royal relaxed and smiling alongside her young comrades-in-arms and fellow future officers.

Some of the skills that she is learning include navigating through open terrain, marching long distances with a 20-kilogram equipment load and live-fire exercises with both assault rifles and sidearms.

Since her enrolment, the elder daughter of King Felipe VI has undergone two weeks of instruction and training at the nearby San Gregorio manoeuvre field in Zaragoza.

She will mark her passing out parade with a flag swearing ceremony at the academy’s parade ground on October 7, after which she will get ready to start her second year of military education.

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Late September: practically its own season. Bright, fresh days with the memory of water – the downpours of last week, which stopped summer dead in its tracks – still present in corners of the land where the sun seldom reaches, still damp, the soil still dark after rain. 

How the grass revives, brave little blades of a vivacious green pushing up and out, stippling the ground like a computer-generated colouring-in. 

There’s a pleasant mental confusion about walking out in the early morning and seeing these tender shoots, feeling the humid air on your face. 

The sheep are energised, running this way and that, hardly able to believe these pastures new, this deliciousness right under their muzzles.

The maize hangs in long rows, the dry cobs tied into pairs – a job that has us channelling crabbed old Galician grandmothers as we sit on wooden stools out on the porch. We tear off the dry outer sheaths leaving just enough on either side to twist and tie, shooting the breeze all the while. 

This year’s colours in the cobs’ mosaic patterns are a pastel pink, a drop-dead coral red, dark elegant grey and a dun green that’s almost khaki. 

As we twist and tie we speculate and joke about the randomness or otherwise of the cobs’ intricate patterning: a message from an alien culture? Some kind of heavenly barcode? Or simply nature in all her meticulous unfathomable beauty?

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COLOMBIAN singing superstar Shakira evaded another €6 million from the Spanish taxman in the year 2018, as well as already having defrauded some €14.5 million in her early years in Spain. That’s according to the Spanish public prosecutor, which has just released information about this second accusation against her. 

News about these allegations first surfaced in July of this year, but now the details have emerged of the wrongdoing that the public prosecutor believes it has uncovered.

This includes a scheme to ‘fake’ the transfer of her music rights to a ‘web of firms’, which allegedly turned out to be shell companies with no employees or activity. 

The fraud includes €5.3 million of income tax (known as IRPF in Spanish) as well as another €700,000 in capital gains tax, according to media reports about the prosecutor’s findings. 

The public prosecutor has called on Interpol to advise the singer about the lawsuit and a court summons for her to be questioned, Spanish daily El Pais reported. 

Shakira has been living in the United States since moving with her children from her former home in Barcelona, in the wake of her very public break-up with former FC Barcelona football player Gerard Pique. 

This latest accusation comes just two months before Shakira will be in court over the first case, in which she is accused of evading paying taxes in Spain by claiming that she was not properly resident in the country during the early years of her relationship with Pique, from 2012 to 2014. 

In that case she could face up to eight years in prison and a fine of more than €23 million.

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