Queues up to ten kilometers to say goodbye to the British Queen
Elizabeth II is the object of a massively popular tribute in the funeral chapel installed in the Palace of Westminster. With British punctuality and covered with the royal standard on which flowers and the imperial crown rest, the procession with the coffin departed at 2:22 p.m. – an hour less in Spain – from Buckingham Palace, his official London residence for seven decades, to face the latter. phase of his long farewell before the funeral and burial next Monday.
The coffin, placed on a mountain drawn by horses, began to travel through some busy streets of London, followed on foot by Carlos III and his brothers Ana, Eduardo and Andrés, as well as by the new monarch’s sons, Guillermo and Eduardo, together right behind his father.
The procession was accompanied by a band of the Scots Guards and the band of the Grenadier Guards who performed the mourning marches of Beethoven, Mendelssohn and Chopin, the third movement of his Piano Sonata No. 2, which was already played at the funeral of the President American John F. Kennedy, and British Prime Ministers Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher.
The 38-minute, 15-kilometer journey was accompanied by a cannon shot from Hyde Park every 60 seconds and the bells of Big Ben ringing in tribute to the UK’s longest-serving ruler.
“It’s a historic event and since we’ve had the chance to come to London, what could be better than seeing all this,” Cristina García, a 44-year-old Spanish tourist, who was caught paying tribute to the Queen during a trip already planned, AFP told her friends.
The funeral chapel of Elizabeth II, who died Thursday at the age of 96, opened its doors at 5 p.m. (4 p.m.) in Westminster Hall, where citizens can bid their final farewells until the scheduled funeral and burial on September 19.
British media speculate that some 750,000 citizens wait patiently to bid farewell to the Queen in rows that will stretch ten kilometers along the banks of the River Thames day and night until Monday.
Early on Wednesday, the first in line awoke with blankets, chairs, tents and raincoats, signs that they had spent the night there. Behind them began to come people sleeping at home, under the watchful eye of the deployed officers.
“The night was quite humid, cold and wet, but I have a small chair and a large umbrella, so I stayed pretty dry. Better than others!” joked Dan Ford, a 52-year-old retired police officer, who arrived Tuesday afternoon wearing gloves and a hat.
Thousands of people braved the rain the day before to welcome the arrival of the coffin in Buckingham with applause and the lights on their cell phones. And 33,000 people passed through the first burning chapel installed in Edinburgh, Scotland’s capital, on Monday and Tuesday.
Authorities asked people in London to dress “appropriately” and warned that the wait could take hours, even at night. The public will only be able to enter the funeral chapel with a small backpack, but without food or water.
Crowded hotels, disrupted transport, overcrowded pubs… The British capital is preparing for the massive popular tribute that will end Monday for the “funeral of the century” at Westminster Abbey.
More than a hundred dignitaries and other personalities will be in attendance, including US President Joe Biden; the King of Spain, Felipe VI, and his father Juan Carlos I; or Brazilian President, Jair Bolsonaro, as announced by a government source.
Venezuelan presidents Nicolás Maduro and Nicaragua Daniel Ortega were not invited to the funeral, a government source told the British Press Association news agency, joining others such as Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Belarusian counterpart.
Although a government document leaked to the press suggested that dignitaries should take a bus to the abbey, organizers explained that Britain’s closest allies could use their own resources.
The funeral of the monarch who has seen the passage of 15 Prime Ministers – the first, Winston Churchill, born in 1874 and the current, Liz Truss, born in 1975 – will take place on the same day at Windsor Castle in a private ceremony, confirming the end of an era.
Meanwhile, Carlos III is in power, but his first steps are not without controversy such as during his visit to Northern Ireland on Tuesday, as part of a tour of the nations of the United Kingdom that will end in Wales on Friday.
The released images showed the new king angry at a pen used to draw in the honorary book that appears to be losing ink. “Oh god, I hate it! (…) I can’t stand that damn thing,” says the monarch, known for his erratic nature.
Source: La Verdad
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