The desfileé is over, it was very emotional indeed, for various reasons:
- Our king )and the Prince also, for that) is one "fuera de serie" (outside of the series, mold destroyed), he suffers and just recoverd from a lung disease operation but did hold out everything thrwon at him this time:
- For the third time consecutively the around 70 family members of the service men that lost their life while in service (27 soldiers and Guardia Civiles since last OCT 12, 9 of them on international missions) were following up in the parade when honoring the fallen, and His Majesty Don Juan Carlos did not hesitate one second to personally greet, shake hands with and consolate each one of them... This in Germany, e.g., would never happen.
- During the act a constant whisteling of attendands could be heard (whisteling being the form of showing disrespect here in Spain) and an outsider could be thinking this was directed at the soldiers of the king, but no: It is directed against our president Zapatero (and recently also his ministers), because during the time we were in Iraq (and he opposition leader) he refused to honor the US troops by remaining seated when everybody raised to their feet), it was culminating in the moment of honoring the fallen when it was replaced with a choir of "Zapatero! Dimision!" = "Zapatero, step down!".
Personally I found that discgraceful, whatever political stance you take and whatever idea you have about the current presedency, this sholuld from my POV be kept out of the moment when the King and the family members of the fallen honor them with the Laurel Crown. Do it before, or later, but not at this moment, this is simply disrespectful from my POV and discredits all your political ideas.
- For the first time ever we had the flags paraded by of all the nations that since the opening to them in 2002 compose the ranks and files of the Spanish Armed Forces, in honor to the lives lost of those nationalities. Namely present were Columbia, Mexico, Honduras, Argentina, Costa Rica, Chile, Ecuador, El Salvador, Paragua, Perú and Uruguay. Soldiers of those nations by now represent 35% of the Spanish Armed Forces, and their death toll percentage lies at 87% of overall causalities.
Anyway, here the promised video with the highlights condensed to 2 vids of some 11 minutes (about the details of the honoring procedure see
my article from 1 1/2 years ago:
The vid starts out with the arrival of the Royal Family rendering respect to the national anthem, follwed by:
- Daily Update from Chief of Staff for the King
- Inspection of the Royal Honor Guard by the King
- Arrival of the Flag (03:50 into the vid - a parachuter brought it in from the sky: He is a seargeant with 18.000+ jumps and part of the parachuting academy that now has a history of 2.5 million jumps without severe accident)
- raising of the flag (09:30 into the vid) by four representatives of each force: Navy, Air Force, Army, Guardia Civil
The next 3 min vid has the hommage to the fallen with the family members (you can hear - though this TV station, Tele Madrid, obviiously had censored it a bit, in reality it was much louder - the Cries of "Zapatero! Dimision! that I mentioned before at the end of the vid:
Last vid of the . most interesting from my POV - third part of the desfile, the "Special Pace" section (I know some of those look a bit strange to the Westerners eye, but they *really* pace and march that way, the film has not been altered at all): Solideos Legion (with their goat), Skiing Battalion, the "Regulars" in their majestic uniforms, etc.:
Rattler
