Just one year and nine months after, it was time for Sweden to cry its monarch. On the 15th September 1973, King Gustav VI Adolf died, having acceded in 1950 on the death of his own father, King Gustav V. Gustav VI Adolf’s son, named after him, had been killed in 1946, and his son Prince Carl Gustav had, in 1973, been crown prince for 23 years. The King of Sweden had maintained a court quite full of protocol and tradition, having inclusively refused the marriage of his son Prince Bertil, second in the line of succession in a country in which women could not accede the throne, to Lilian Craig, a simple commoner. On the 15th September 1973, Sweden has a new king: Carl XVI Gustav. The enthronement ceremony, yet very solemn but more discreet than in the years of King Gustav VI Adolf’s reign, took place on the 19th September, in the Throne Room of the Royal Palace of Stockholm. In another room of the Royal Palace, the King presided over the Cabinet meeting, and after having announced what his title would be, signed the enthronement documents, listening afterwards to a brief speech by Prime Minister Mr. Olaf Palme.

The Cabinet then joined the other guests in the Throne Room, to which the King was the last to enter, with his uncle the Prince Bertil, new heir to the throne, who had been by his side during the Cabinet meeting. On his entrance to the Throne Room, just before Prince Bertil, the King bowed to the several sides, bowed to his nation who was represented there. Under the magnificent canopy of the Throne Room, and standing in front of the magnificent silver throne, which had the royal robes over it, to the right the crown and to the left the sceptre in cushions, the King spoke to the nation in a moving speech. He said:

“I’ll put my efforts in being able to respond to the burden of exigencies that fall over a monarch, nowadays. My grandfather, admired and beloved, had become a symbol of the modern monarchy. I am firmly decided to follow his example.”

Having the Crown Prince, Bertil, by his side, he confidently showed his wish to pursue his grandfather’s work. The solemn ceremony was quite brief but given an imposing touch by all the uniforms of the King’s personal bodyguards, who stood beside the canopy. In the tribune were seating the sisters of the King with their husbands, wearing the traditional mourning dresses of the Swedish Court. At the end of the ceremony, the King left the Throne Room and, with the other members of the Royal Family, proceeded to the balcony of the Royal Palace, on which he appeared, first alone. He was warmly cheered by a several-thousand strong crowd, despite some unpopularity of himself as a Crown Prince. His family joined him on the balcony and the day’s ceremonies were finished.

The King’s popularity was maintained in a medium term in those difficult years, but things changed when his engagement to commoner Miss Silvia Sommerlath was announced in 1976. They married in a brilliant ceremony in June that year, and since then the popularity of the King, the Royal Family and the Monarchy deeply increased. The King himself, like his cousin Queen Margrethe II (her mother Queen Ingrid was a daughter of King Gustav VI Adolph and sister of Charles Gustaf’s father and Prince Bertil), celebrated his silver jubilee in 1998, although in a much more reserved way, including the celebrations in the National Day, in June. King Carl Gustav and Queen Silvia have three children: Crown Princess Victoria, Prince Carl Philip and Princess Madeleine. The Constitution was changed in 1980 to end the Salic Law and to exclude the any prevalence of the male heirs, and despite Prince Carl Philip had been born and was Crown Prince for some months, Princess Victoria became Crown Princess and his today extremely popular in Sweden.

The next enthronement would take place 2 years after, actually the most unusual kind of enthronement. No king had abdicated, no king had died. The Spanish dictator, Generalíssimo Francisco Franco, had designated Juan Carlos, Prince of the Asturias, son of the Count of Barcelona, the Head of the Spanish Royal House, as Prince of Spain and his “successor with the title of king”. Spain had been a monarchy for several decades, after Franco abolished the republic. But it was a Kingdom without a King. Franco was determined not to allow D. Juan, Count of Barcelona, to be King and decided to make him suffer, watching as his own son became King while he was still living and having not abdicated. And indeed the Count of Barcelona suffered a great lot, even if he understood that his son was working for the future of Spain. After a long agony, Franco died on the 20th November 1975. Doctors, among whom the dictator’s own son-in-law the Marquess of Villaverde, had been cruelly trying to keep him alive for some more days so that a new form of resistance of the regime was formed, on the fear that Prince Juan Carlos could destroy the system. But God’s will was stronger and Franco’s soul was called on judgement on the 20th November, leaving Juan Carlos with the most difficult of the inheritances of all the European Monarchs.

Juan Carlos was born in 1938, the first son but second child of the Prince and Princess of the Asturias, grandson of exiled King Alfonso XIII of Spain. In 1962 he married the Princess Sofia of Greece and Denmark, daughter of King Paul I and Queen Fredericka of the Hellenes, with whom he had three children: Infantas Elena and Cristina and Infante Felipe, born in 1968, just one year before Juan Carlos’ designation as Prince of Spain and heir of Franco. Two days after the dictator’s death began a long but inevitable and desired transition towards democracy, after the 40 dark years of Franco’s dictatorship. King Juan Carlos arrived with his wife Queen Sofia to the Cortes, where the 560 deputies, the Diplomatic Corps, members of the Royal Family and Franco’s family, and some few heads of state, which for being so few seemed to refuse their support to the new King, awaited him.

Index Page
Part Three