Today there will be no apparition at Palma Cathedral, a tradition that was marked by the disagreement between Queens Leticia and Sofia on Easter Sunday 2018, but yesterday, for the first time, the Kings and their daughters were present in a religious manifestation typical of Holy Week.
After ten o'clock at night, with the streets of Chinchón (Madrid) full of people, the Kings, Princess Eleonor and Infanta Sofia arrived at the Plaza de San Roque, where the prayer of Jesus in the hort de les Oliveres, one of the eight paintings of the Living Passion that have been performed in Chinchón every Holy Saturday for 60 years. There was also the president of the Community of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, who went to the commemoration of the 60th anniversary of the Passion.
The ephemeris was the excuse for the first private appearance of the Kings and their daughters linked to a religious celebration, although the Zarzuela emphasized the cultural and popularly rooted component of the performance, with the aim of preserving the non-denominational character of the Crown. The King, like his daughters, is a practicing Catholic, while the Queen, who attends religious events when the official occasion requires it, does not participate in the liturgy. In recent years, the royal family has been invited from different localities to witness processions without, until just yesterday, having gone to any proper celebration of Holy Week.
The particular and condensed viacrucis, in which 200 residents take part, began when night fell and was staged in the streets of Chinchón, turned into Jerusalem. After the Last Supper scene, in the well-known Plaça Major, the living scenes of the prayer in the Olive Garden, the Detention, the Three Falls, the meeting with the Virgin, the Crucifixion and, finally, the painting of the Resurrection, in which the citizen representing Jesus Christ ascends the facade of a church amid white smoke and doves.
The Kings and their daughters followed the route with difficulty due to the agglomeration of locals and visitors, although the different scenes are delimited by fences to preserve the actors and the careful scenography. The appearance of the royal family in Chinchón also aimed to be seen all together, an image that had not been seen since October 28, when the Kings, Eleonor and Sofia attended the award ceremony in Oviedo Princess of Asturias.
