Welcome to my "Ambassadors Commissioning Ceremony" description page, for photos & videos of this event click --> HERE.
This is the
first and probably the last time that this event takes place in the Plaza Mayor
so I was very lucky to be around to shoot it and to be abe to bring it to you on
.
When there are 3 or 4 new foreign ambassadors to Spain, they are officially
commissioned and welcomed as representatives of their country here.
They may not be appointed at teh same time but the Spanish Government waits for
3 or 4 new ambassadors to accumulate due to the extremely expensive ceremony. They
are commisioned and driven in Royal horse drawn carriages from the Ministry fo
Foreign Affairs to the Palacio
Real where they are greeted by
the King, to whom they present their official letters of appointment. After the Palacio
Real they go back to their
respective embassies in diplomatic cars. You can see one of the cars with the
license plate that reads "CD" and then the number of the plate in my
photos. CD stands for "Cuerpo Diplomatico" or "Diplomatic Corps"
which means it is an official state car. Usually this procession only passes
through the Plaza Mayor on the way from the Foreign Ministry to Palacio
Real but since the streets in
front of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs were a royal (no pun intended) mess due
to construction at the time (putting in another underground parking, yuckooo!!!),
they could not use the Ministry building as a departing point so they decided to
use the Plaza (thank God for "Obras"). So, we got a real treat. I
recorded all of it!!! It was a very long ceremony because they had to bring
about 5 ambassadors and their spouses from the Plaza to the Royal Palace in only
2 carriages and they made a seperate trip for each one. The best thing about
this was that it may be one of those once in a lifetime experiences.
You can see some similar royal maneuvers on my Dos de Mayo photo pages.