Melilla woke up to sunshine, palm trees and flags, and by mid-morning it had a royal memory to keep for years. On October 14, King Felipe VI and Queen Letizia began an official visit to the Autonomous City of Melilla, arriving at the Palacio de la Asamblea, the seat of the city’s Assembly, where the principal authorities of Melilla received them at the start of a morning built around one simple idea – the Crown had come to listen, to greet and to say, in person, that this city matters.
The Royal Household told the story on its official Instagram account, @casareal.es, in two posts published twenty minutes apart. A reel at 06:16 caught the visit in motion, the Queen working a cheerful crowd line while the King shook hands just behind her. A carousel at 06:36 gave the morning its still portraits, and one of them is already the picture of the day – Queen Letizia, in a pale pink pleated blouse and black wide trousers, leaning into the crowd with both arms open, smiling broadly, while a forest of Spanish flags waves around her and King Felipe, in a grey pinstripe suit, beams over her shoulder.
First the people, as always
Anyone who followed the couple in Ceuta the day before will recognise the rhythm, because it is deliberate. The formal programme waits a few minutes while the human programme happens first. In our report from Ceuta on October 13, the same pattern held – crowd first, palace second – and Melilla gave that pattern a warmth all of its own. Hands reached out from behind the barriers, phones rose, children waved small flags on sticks, and one well-wisher held up a Melilla flag with its coat of arms for the cameras. The Queen did not rush any of it. She stopped, she listened, she laughed, and she reached for the next hand.
That unhurried quality is the real news in photographs like these. A royal walkabout can be a photo opportunity, or it can be a conversation held at walking pace. Melilla got the conversation. The King, grey-bearded and relaxed in the bright light, worked the same line a step behind, shaking hands with the easy air of a man who knows that these thirty seconds are, for the person on the other side of the barrier, the whole visit.
Inside the Palacio de la Asamblea
Once the couple stepped inside the Palacio de la Asamblea, the morning turned to its official business, and the Household’s account is admirably precise. The King and Queen greeted the members of the Consejo de Gobierno, the city’s Government Council. They then held a working meeting with representatives of Melillan society – that broad, careful phrase the Spanish monarchy uses for the teachers, business owners, civic leaders, cultural figures and neighbours who, gathered around one table, can tell a King and Queen what a city actually needs and what it does best.
Then came the ceremonial heart of the visit. The King received the Key to the City of Melilla, the honour with which a city tells a treasured guest that its doors stand open to him. It is worth pausing on how rare a double this is. The King received the same honour in Ceuta only yesterday, which means that in the space of two mornings, two autonomous cities on the Mediterranean have each handed Felipe VI their key. Keys are not handed out by routine. Each one is a decision, taken by a city, about a relationship it wants to mark – and two in two days is a statement about the place this reign wants to hold in the life of both cities.
The Household added a line that sums up the purpose of the whole morning. The King and Queen, it said, used the visit to convey the support of the Crown to the institutions of Melilla and to Melillan society. Support, here, is not an abstract word. It is the working meeting, the greeting to the Government Council, the time spent in the street, and the key accepted with gratitude – four ways of saying the same thing in one morning.
A two-city tour with a single message
Read together, Ceuta and Melilla now form a small tour with a clear shape, and that shape is itself the distinctive point of this week in the royal diary. On October 12 the family marked Spain’s National Day in Madrid. On October 13 they were in Ceuta, palace, school and all. On October 14 they were in Melilla, doing the same careful work in a different city with a different crowd and the same open-handed style. Capitals get the ceremonies, but it is in cities like these, at barrier level, that a monarchy renews its contact with the people it serves.
The public response online matched the response in the street. By the time of this report, the Melilla reel had drawn about 6,667 likes and 138 comments, and the carousel about 4,632 likes and 53 comments, on an account followed by more than 1.43 million people. Those numbers keep climbing, and they point the same way the flags in the photographs do – towards affection, plainly shown.
There is also a quieter comparison worth making with another royal palace this week, where Queen Silvia took the podium in Stockholm for a forum devoted to children. Different countries, different rooms, the same lesson – royal influence works best when it is spent on people, face to face. And readers who enjoyed the school chapter of this tour can revisit the visit to the Vicente Aleixandre school in Ceuta, where the same couple swapped a palace for a classroom.
Melilla asked for a visit and received a morning of flags in the sunshine, a working meeting that listened, and a key given in friendship. If Ceuta was the opening chapter of this Mediterranean tour, Melilla was its warm confirmation – a city that turned out in force, and a King and Queen who met it, quite literally, with open arms.
Photo: @casareal.es
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