The Diplomat
Their Majesties the King and Queen, accompanied by the Princess of Asturias, yesterday presided over the National Day celebrations, which included a military parade and a reception for the authorities at the Royal Palace.
Thousands of people attended the military parade, which took place on the Paseo del Prado and Recoletos, and cheered and applauded the King and Queen and the Princess of Asturias on their arrival at the Plaza de Neptuno, where the main tribune was located.
Precisely when the acting Prime Minister arrived in the square to wait for the members of the Royal Family, there were numerous whistles, boos and shouts of “¡qué te vote Txapote! directed at Pedro Sánchez. These boos were repeated at the end of the military act, for which the head of the Executive later blamed the PP, in an informal conversation with journalists at the Royal Palace. For his part, the leader of the PP, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, commented that the booing “is a classic” and assured that no leader of his party had “organised or ordered” it, calling it a “joke” for the president to say otherwise.
The attention of those attending the parade was focused, in any case, on the presence of Princess Leonor, who, for the first time, wore the dress uniform of a lady cadet at the General Military Academy in Zaragoza, where she is undergoing her military training.
The Princess took her place in the main tribune, in the Plaza de Neptuno, next to Don Felipe and Doña Letizia, to the right of her father. She also accompanied the King at the ceremony in which he laid a wreath as an offering to those who gave their lives for Spain.
Later, at the reception at the Royal Palace, Doña Leonor, together with her parents, also received the greetings of the 2,000 people who were invited, and chatted with some of them, always accompanied by Doña Letizia.
Both the parade and the reception were attended by Pedro Sánchez, the Minister of Defence, Margarita Robles, and the rest of the ministers in office, with the exception of the First Vice-President, Nadia Calviño, who was in Morocco, and the Minister of Equality, Irene Montero, who is in Chile participating in an event of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC).
Also in attendance were the senior state authorities, the leaders of the main political parties and the regional presidents, except for the lehendakari, Iñigo Urkullu, who is on an official trip to Japan, and the Catalan president, Pere Aragonès, whose absence is customary.
Foreign ambassadors accredited in Madrid also attended the military parade and came to the Royal Palace.
More than 4,000 soldiers, 86 aircraft, 142 vehicles and 210 horses took part in the military parade, and the Parachute Acrobatic Patrol of the Spanish Air Force (PAPEA) jumped without incident, with a parachutist – the ‘green beret’ María del Carmen Gómez Hurtad – carrying the Spanish flag for the first time on National Day. For its part, the Eagle Patrol drew the Spanish flag, also without incident.
