Isabel II was in Portugal twice, was decorated by Soares and four Presidents (the last one has a story)
Queen Elizabeth II of England, the longest-reigning monarch in the history of the United Kingdom (1952-2022) and who died today at the age of 96, visited Portugal twice, in 1957 and 1985. Having occupied the British throne for 70 years and 214 days, just behind French King Louis XIV, who holds the title of the longest-reigning sovereign in the world, Elizabeth II moved for the first time in Portugal in 1957.
It was his fourth visit abroad after his accession to the throne, at the age of 25, the sudden death of his father, King George VI, and the first in 50 years by a British sovereign to the “faithful Ally”, at the invitation of the then President of the Portuguese Republic, General Francisco Craveiro Lopes.
Craveiro Lo had been received by the monarch in London two years earlier, in 1955. He was the third foreign state to visit the young queen, just two years after her coronation (1953).
In February 1957, at the age of 30, Isabel II was transported from the royal yacht Britannia, anchored in the Tagusin a sumptuous 18th century brigantine, whose beauty she praised – declaring “they have beautiful things” – and more Portuguese received with pomp and circumstance at the Portuguese pier of Colunas, where they were profiled.
The Palace of Queluz followed, during several months of construction, a parade with thousands of men, and it stayed in the Palace of Queluz, in several months of operation, for several months, and a parade with thousands of men.
In addition to the capital, Isabel II traveled to Porto, Vila Franca de Xira, Nazaré, Alcobaça and the monastery of Batalha.
Rádio Televisão Portuguesa (P), still in an experimental visit phase, made this the first report from abroad.
In 1977, three years after the end of the dictatorship, Portuguese President António Ramalho Eanes paid a state visit to the United Kingdom.following a passage through the European Parliament, Strasbourg, France, following a regime change in Portugal and the desire to be European.
In a sign of support for the young European democracy, Isabel II returned to Portugal in 1985, months before Lisbon formally joined the European Union. (then European Economic Community), signed by the prime minister, Mário Soares. The socialist leader would star in the last state visit between the two countries, when he traveled to the United Kingdom in 1993 as President of the Republic, taking the opportunity to decorate the Queen with the Grand Collar of the Order of the Tower and Sword.
Isabel II was the third foreign statesman to receive the highest Portuguese honorary distinction that needed special approval in Lisbon, after being awarded to two Brazilian decrees: the Spanish head of state General Francisco Franco and President Garrastazu Médici.
The special decree was necessary because it was a specific distinction intended for different former Presidents of the Republic at the end of the mandatory correspondents, a rule that was only changed in 2011.
Isabel II returned to Portugal, but not British in 1987, the then heir to the crown, Prince Carlos, accompanied by his first wife, Princess Diana, visited the country.. Before that, in 1986, one of his younger brothers, Prince Andrew, spent part of his honeymoon with his wife, Sarah Ferguson, in the Azores.
Carlos – from today, King Carlos III of the United Kingdom – returned to Lisbon for an official visit during the 1998 World Exhibition (Expo’98).
Jorge Sampaio, in 2002, and Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, in 2016, were both received as heads of state by the Queen at Buckingham Palace, although on an official work visit and not one of state.
Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa’s meeting with the Queen was notable for the brief exchange of words captured by the cameras of television, when the President recalled having watched the two visits of monar Portugal. “I was there, I was a child”, I tell, regarding the first visit of the monarch, in 1957, when he was eight years old, to which the Queen wittily replied: “I am sure that when it was”.
The Platinum Jubilee of Elizabeth II – her 70th year of reign, whose celebrations take place between February and June of this year – coincided with the 650th anniversary of the oldest diplomatic alliance in the world, between Portugal and the United Kingdom, which lasts until now actuality.
The Treaty of Alliance between Portugal and England, or Treaty of Tagilde, was signed on July 10, 1372, between Portugal and England, in the Church of São Salvador de Tagilde, between King Fernando the Beautiful and representatives of the Duke of Lancaster (son of Edward III of England).
The Treaty of Tagilde was the first of a series of agreements that consolidated the Anglo-Portuguese alliance, the oldest among the states in the world, in particular the Treaty of Windsor (1386), which resulted in the marriage of the King of Portugal, João I , with D. Filipa de Lencastre.