The Diplomat
The King and Queen of Spain attended yesterday the state funeral for Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom, where they sat next to the King Emeritus and Queen Sofia. According to the Royal Household, Juan Carlos I attended the event “attending the invitations received in his capacity as former head of state.”
“The head of state, it is clear, is King Philip VI,” Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Albares, who accompanied the King and Queen at the funeral, held at Westminster Abbey, told the press. “The emeritus king is in London responding to an invitation in a personal capacity and, therefore, I believe that the roles are clearly defined and the reason why they are here, too,” Albares continued.
Philip VI and Letizia have been in London since Sunday, when they visited Elizabeth II’s mortuary chapel, installed at the Palace of Westminster, and later attended, at Buckingham Palace, a reception offered by King Charles III to the heads of state and government present at the funeral.
Don Juan Carlos and Queen Sofia attended “the reception offered by His Majesty the King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland” and the “state funeral of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II in response to the invitations received in her capacity as former head of state,” said the Royal Household, which has insisted at all times that all matters relating to the organization and protocols of the funeral and the rest of the events were the responsibility of the authorities of the United Kingdom.
As can be seen in the image distributed by the Royal Household from Televisión Española, the King and Queen, the King Emeritus and Queen Sofía were seated together in the second row, together with representatives of other royal houses, such as the kings of Norway, Sweden and Belgium and the grand dukes of Luxembourg, among others. This is the first image of the father and son together in more than two years.
After the funeral, Philip VI attended at Windsor Castle, at the invitation of Charles III, the religious ceremony in St. George’s Chapel, prior to the burial of Elizabeth II. Queen Letizia did not attend this event because she had to travel to New York to participate in some events organized in the margins of the UN General Assembly. Doña Sofía did attend the ceremony in Windsor, unlike Don Juan Carlos, who “declined the invitation”. The funeral took place around 7.30 p.m., in a private family ceremony.
In the aforementioned statements to the press, Albares expressed his confidence that Charles III will introduce “the British Crown fully into the 21st century” and will therefore carry out “the necessary adaptations to continue responding, as Elizabeth II did, to the needs of its citizens in a different stage, which is the 21st century”. “We are sure that with King Charles III and the new Prime Minister, Liz Truss, who are inaugurating a new stage of leadership in the United Kingdom, relations will continue to be as close as in the previous stage,” he added.
