More than 2,000 guests Tomorrow they will go to the Royal Palace in Madrid for the reception that the Kings offer every year on the occasion of National Day. After the military parade on Paseo de la Castellana, Don Felipe and Dona Letiziaaccompanied by Princess Eleonorethey will go to their official residence, where the traditional kissing of hands will take place in the throne room.
This is the largest event that the House of HM the King organizes each year on the occasion of the October 12. If the trend of the last two years continues, it is very likely that the greetings of the kings and princesses to all the guests will take place in several rounds. Last year, when 2,500 people attended – the busiest event to date – greetings were distributed in four shifts.
We will have to wait to see if the the queen plays the kiss of the hands standing or sitting – as he did at Marivent Palace last August or during the state trip to the Netherlands in April – for the ailments he has suffered for a long time in his feet due to the Morton’s neuroma from which he suffers, in addition to his metatarsalgia and the fracture of one of the phalanges of his right foot, from which he suffered last May and from which he has not completely recovered. The Zarzuela Palace has not indicated what the reception will look like in this sense, so we will have to wait until tomorrow to see it live.
Picture of the day
One of the photographs that will be left today will be that of Princess Leonor dressed in white navy uniformhas. If last year he wore the Army uniform because he was studying at the General Military Academy of Zaragoza, in this edition he will do it with the naval uniform, since last August he entered the Marín Naval Military School, in Pontevedra.
If Princess Leonor takes last year’s national holiday as a reference, it is very likely that she will receive the guests at the Royal Palace in uniform and will not change clothes, as her father does every year, which later in the parade always replaces the uniform with a costume to receive its guests as head of state and not as head of the armed forces.
Last year, at her first reception at the Royal Palace, Princess Leonor was 18 days away from reaching the age of majority and being sworn into the Constitution as heir to the crown before the Cortes Generales, so it will be the first time in the one who presides with her parents over the National Day after having fulfilled her constitutional obligations.
Politicians, groups and the absence of Infanta Sofia
Among those attending the reception will be the president Pedro Sanchezas well as the ministers who make up the Government. In addition to representatives of state powers, presidents of autonomous communities, the diplomatic corps accredited in Spain, leaders of political parties, mayors of provincial capitals, members of civil society, businessmen and a large group of media representatives.
The fact that so many journalists are going to the Palais Royal tomorrow will encourage, for an additional edition, the famous bands with the President of the Government and the leaders of the opposition, at a time when there are also so many current issues to address and ask.
Once the greetings are over, the Kings and Princess Leonor will disperse into the rooms of the Royal Palace set up for the reception and this will be the time when they can chat in a relaxed manner with the guests. The only one absent that day will be Infanta Sofía, who, like last year, is studying the International Baccalaureate at UWC Atlantic College, the same institution her sister attended.
It will only be next time October 24 where the entire royal family can be seen during the Princess of Asturias awards ceremony in Oviedo.
