Eight months after taking the throne after the death of Elizabeth II, Carlos III was solemnly crowned on Saturday along with his wife Camila in a lavish ceremonyunique in Europe, that the United Kingdom has not lived for 70 years.
At Westminster Abbey in central London, Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby, spiritual leader of the Church of England, placed on the head of the 74-year-old monarch, the crown of Saint Edward and Queen Camilla was crowned immediately after.
Sitting in the front row the heirs to the crown, Guillermo and Catalina, aged 40 and 41, followed the religious ceremonypunctuated by choral songs, sermons and gospel readings, conceived according to a lavish ritual practically unchanged for a thousand years.
They were accompanied by about 2,300 guestsamong them figures such as the first lady of the United States Jill Biden, the Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and the kings Felipe VI and Letizia of Spain, as well as hundreds of representatives of British civil society.
Prince Harry, Charles’s youngest son who maintains tense relations with the royal family, sat discreetly next to his cousins in the third row, without his wife Meghan Marklewho stayed in California with their two children.
“God save King Charles!”shouted the attendees opening the ceremony with this recognition, accompanied by a fanfare of trumpets, after Carlos III and Camila, 75, entered dressed in ceremonial capes after a short procession by float from Buckingham Palace.
With his hand on the Bible, the king took an oath. Then, in what is considered the holiest part of the ceremony, Archbishop Welby anointed the hands, chest and head of the monarch, hidden from view by a screen.
Substituting the traditional homage of the aristocrats, the priest then invited all the people, from where they were watching or listening to the coronation, to swear allegiance to the new king, a historical first that seeks to democratize the ceremony, but which powerfully criticizes the antimonarchists.
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