It’s coming up to midday and a stationary Guards band along the Mall is playing the James Bond 007 tune, presumably to remind the world that however diminished the UK may seem, no one does it better than the MI6 legend, the world’s most popular spy.
The film music is a sufficiently familiar theme for nearby tourists to break into applause. Such recognition does not initially appear to extend to the State visit to the UK of the King Felipe and Queen Letizia Spain. The most public part of the day’s programme seems to have most tourists, who came from all corners of the world, but on this morning seem mostly French and Japanese and Indian, unsure as to whether they are witnessing an extended changing of the guard or a repeat performance of the Queen’s birthday.
Only a minority of tourists –all of them speaking Spanish -seem to have taken time off from shopping in Oxford street out of a sense of patriotic duty- and they are excited.
They take a load of photographs , but their cheers are downed by the clutter of the lifeguard horses, the buzzing of a police helicopter overhead, and the barking sounds of the guards officers and sergeants.
No one has handed out Spanish flags- or Union Jacks or EU ones for that matter. I see one person clutching a Cross of St George, patron of the English and the Catalans . I move among the Spaniards saying Bienvenidos a Londres and handing out free copies of the BrtishSpanish Society magazine La Revista before King Felipe and Queen Elizabeth pass by, looking happy enough in each other’s company as they move towards Buckingham Palace in the lead Royal carriage where are to study some priceless letters written by Queen Ena, granddaughter of Queen Victoria and wife to Alfonso X111.
The whole procession and accompanying military pomp is impeccably choreographed because the British have long turned a State visit, like spying, into an art form, even producing a sun through the leaden London sky to remind us of Spain.
It all seems to work like clockwork, all the pomp and majesty, and the weather, and the crowds, as does King Felipe’s speech later in the afternoon to a packed hall in the Houses of Parliament.
The young Spanish monarch reads in upper crust foreign English a speech that has been previously discussed, debated and finally finessed by diplomats on both sides who want this to be the best news story of the day. After all most people are fed up with the uncertainly of Brexit, and Nadal and now Andy Murray knocked out of Wimbledon, although the fascinating possibility of a rare British-Spanish ladies tennis final beckons. And yes, as we are reminded by the Commons speaker John Bercow, King Felipe is keen on tennis and has also been in his country’s Olympic sailing team, in 1992. Just as well Bercow didn’t mention Barcelona.
As it turns out King Felipe’s speech makes no mention of Catalonia or Scotland or Ireland but touches all the right buttons on everything else. He praises the oldest parliament in Europe, the wartime resilience of the UK people , the heroism of the victims of terrorism- among them Box Cox MP, the policeman Keith Palmer, the Spaniard Ignacio Echeverría.
From Shakespeare and Cervantes to tourists, trade, investments, historians and residents, the UK and Spain have much in common and everything to gain from forging an even stronger bilateral relationship-the nations and people ‘profoundly entwined “, King Felipe tells us. The question of quite how one can stay profoundly entwined, when Spain is staying in the EU, and hard Brexiteers are looking to separate, was left for another day.
It was not the only set aside. For all that gossip mischievously circulated twenty-fours earlier that a group of Tory MP’s would walk out no sooner did the King mention the dreaded G-word , the prediction came to nothing .
Gibraltar was mentioned but in a paragraph so delicately crafted by diplomats as to make a future agreement sound achievable but without saying anything of substance that might risk drawing venom from any one side in the dispute.
It still did not please some people in Gibraltar but it was enough to please his hosts. It began with John Bercow paying tribute to King Felipe’s ‘sporting prowess’ and ended with the Lords speaker Lord Fowler expressing loudly ‘that was a very good speech, your Majesty’ before exclaiming Viva el Rey to which the hall responded Viva and a prolonged standing ovation. Ahead lay a royal banquet at Buckingham Palace. Not bad for Day One.
