Gala dinner, museums and carriage: this will be the trip of the Kings to Sweden next week

With practically no time to recover from one tiara, we will have to talk about another. Because only eight days after celebrating the first gala dinner in our country after the pandemic in honor of the Italian president, visiting Spain these days, the Queen will have to take another from her jewelry box. The website of the Swedish Royal House has published how the two days of the State visit that Felipe and Letizia will make to Sweden next week. And there will be everything: from a carriage parade through the streets of Stockholm to a gala dinner, going through a visit to the Nobel Museum or time to talk about rare diseases.

The purpose of the trip is to strengthen good relations between countries, in addition to stimulating collaboration for the recovery of one nation and another after the pandemic, with a focus on innovative and sustainable solutions, as we can read in the official information. The relationship between the two royal families is assumed to be good, since in addition there are family ties between them. But there is never a need for a reunion in which we can see images of the two kings together, which has not occurred since October 2019, when both traveled to Tokyo for the coronation of Emperor Naruhito.

The first image that we will have of the two heads of state and their respective wives will take place on Wednesday morning, when the arrival of King Felipe and Queen Letizia in Stockholm. Together with their hosts, they will tour the Stockholm streets in a carriage to the Royal Palace, where there will be a welcome very similar to the one we saw this Tuesday in Madrid for the Italian president. Afterwards, the Kings will be received by the Swedish Parliament and Government, before having a private lunch in the same place with the entire royal family.

In the afternoon, Don Felipe and Doña Letizia will visit the Nobel Museum, in the historic center of the Swedish capital. Located on the ground floor of the Stock Exchange building, it houses all the history of the awards, from the life of its creator Alfred Nobel to the personal belongings of some of the most outstanding winners. The collection displays priceless items, such as Marie Curie’s tools, one of Fleming’s first penicillin samples or a replica of Nobel’s will. But, in addition to all these objects, you can enjoy a special exhibition of the Spanish Santiago Ramón y Cajal, Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1906.

Then the Kings will have separate agendas. Don Felipe will go with his counterpart – and almost uncle, for the relationship of both with Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom– to be received by the Speaker of Parliament and the Prime Minister. While the Queen Letizia and Queen Silvia of Sweden They will move to the Karolinska Institutet in Solna, where they will participate in a seminar on disability and rare diseases. And it is that precisely this topic is one of the great concerns of both, and for those who strive the most from their respective positions.

And the most anticipated moment of any State visit will come later, the gala dinner. We had not seen Letizia without a tiara for more than two years. Precisely, the last time had been in the Naruhito coronation of Japan that we mentioned before. But in just over a week, we are going to have it twice. It is assumed that he will not choose the same as for the gala dinner in honor of Sergio Mattarella, with which of the seven that you usually have at your disposal, you can choose from the remaining six. Silvia from Sweden, on the other hand, has already taken one out of her jewelry box after the pandemic, since last September they received the German president and he returned to throwing away the most valuable jewels of the Bernadottes.

On Wednesday, as usual in this type of official visit, kings and queens will once again have a separate agenda. Carlos Gustavo and Felipe will hold a business meeting at the Grand Hôtel, with representatives from five industries from each country to discuss the topics of the State visit, among others, intelligent transportation, digitization and a sustainable recovery after the pandemic. The same ones that they will address in a subsequent seminar, to be held at the Opera Terrace and in a meeting that will take place at the Institute of Technology. While, Letizia and Silvia will participate in another seminar, but in your case of languages, organized by the Swedish Institute and Cervantes Institute.

During this second day of the visit, the city of Stockholm will offer a traditional lunch in honor of the Kings at the Town Hall, before they visit the Royal Academy of Engineering Sciences, which will also address issues related to climate change. Then, without much time between one and the other, it will be Felipe and Letizia who will become hosts, since they will hold a reception in honor of the kings Carlos Gustavo and Silvia at the Spanish embassy, ​​a new opportunity to show their excellent relationship.

It will then be time to say goodbye, but it will not be at this reception, but at Arlanda airport a little later. The Swedish Kings will accompany their guests there to offer them the farewell they deserve and put the finishing touch to this state visit. A visit that, as you can see, is going to be very intense and is going to be full of activities, including a gala dinner that we like so much and that we were already beginning to miss.