The United Kingdom begins the festivities for the 70 years of Elizabeth II on the throne | International

The celebrations of the Platinum Jubilee in commemoration of the 70th anniversary of the reign of Elizabeth II (96 years old) began this Thursday in London at 11:00 a.m. (Spanish peninsular time) with the Trooping The Color, the multitudinous military parade with which the official birthday of the sovereign is celebrated at the beginning of June. Tens of thousands of people have flocked to the British capital to greet a queen who arrives at the event at the height of her popularity. Some of them had spent the night in the open, camping on The Mall, the avenue that leads to Buckingham Palace, to reserve a place in the front rows and witness the parade of 1,500 officers and the subsequent flight of the Royal Air Force over the Palace.

Despite her 96 years and the mobility problems that the British royal house has reported, the queen has reappeared in this event to star in the most iconic image of the House of Windsor: the greeting from the balcony of the palace after observing the low flight of the Red Arrows or the spit firewith its trail of colors of the British flag, the Union Jack. The monarch went out on the balcony accompanied by her cousin, Prince Edward, Duke of Kent, and flanked by her son and heir, Charles of England (73 years old) and his wife, Camilla Parker-Bowles, as well as the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, William and Kate, and their three children.

The celebrations will continue this Friday with a great religious ceremony in Westminster Abbey, a concert and show in honor of the queen on Saturday, and thousands of street celebrations throughout the country with meals, parties, concerts, other religious celebrations, and even a national contest to come up with a new pudding recipe, the so-called Jubilee Pudding, sponsored by the prestigious house of deli, supplier for decades of the royal house, Fortnum & Mason. On Sunday, another parade will close the four days of festivities.

Buckingham Palace released an official message from the Queen on Wednesday night thanking her subjects “in the United Kingdom and throughout the Commonwealth” for their participation in the Jubilee, as well as the organizers of the festivities for their support. worked.

“I continue to be inspired by the goodwill that has been shown to me and I hope that the coming days will be an opportunity to reflect on all that has been achieved over the past 70 years, as we look to the future with confidence and enthusiasm,” the queen said. a text signed “Elizabeth R.”, her first name in English and the letter erre for “regina”, queen in Latin.

54% of Britons believe that the monarchy is good for their country. Barely 13% think otherwise. And one in four say they don’t know. These approval ratings rise sharply when it comes to evaluating the queen herself. The British sovereign Elizabeth II preserves a popularity far superior to that of the rest of the members of the British royal family. 76% of citizens have a positive view of her and her reign, according to the tracking maintained for years by the polling company YouGov. The relevant thing is that, according to that same sound, the popularity of the monarch among the millennial generation (from 26 to 40 years old) is 65%. Between the Baby Boomers (from 55 to 75 years old), approval is 86%.

Isabel II, who closed in 2021 her second tonus horribilis, with the death in April of her husband, the Duke of Edinburgh; a pandemic that kept her confined to Windsor; the headaches caused by her grandson, Prince Harry, and his wife, Meghan Markle; and the scandal of her son, Prince Andrew, accused in a US court of sexual abuse of a minor; she has faced 2022 with an intense agenda that serves to remind the British that she is still at the foot of the canyon. In the same way that her predecessors earned the royal name, such as William the Conqueror, Alfred the Great or Edward the Confessor, the queen should also have her own, royal historian Hugo Vickers suggested to the AP agency. “I have always thought that she should be called Isabel the Unbreakable. That would be the perfect way to describe it. She never expected to be queen, and yet she embraced that duty without hesitation,” Vickers assures.

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