Jon Clarke (Publisher & Editor)
From the Olive Press editor Jon Clarke
THE harrowing photo of Prince William arriving at Balmoral yesterday evening told it all.
We didn’t need any words to go with the snap of the future king driving his uncles Andrew and Edward into the royal Scottish residence.
Their grim faces told it all.
It was at that point that we at the Olive Press and, no doubt thousands of expats around Spain, knew that Britain’s longest-serving monarch was dead.
The actual announcement came around an hour later, at exactly 19.40 last night, Spanish time.
While we are no tub-thumping royalist paper, it still left all the staff working on the newsdesk noticeably shaken. Even our Spanish ones.
Quite simply, to echo the words of one of our readers, she was ‘an icon of our time’, a survivor, who showed great empathy and humour throughout her life.
Not only did she live through one world war (and a World Cup win), she had no less than 15 Prime Ministers serving under her.
As the recent TV drama, the Crown, so clearly showed, her life was anything but a bed of roses and she was frequently lonely and dealing with personal tragedy.
Aside from the affairs of her husband and the controversial divorce of Charles, she had to deal with the recent drama surrounding Prince Andrew and her grandson Prince Harry’s very public fallout with the royal family.
But the events that followed the death of Princess Diana were some of the most chaotic in the history of the British Isles.
In short, it was bedlam, and with blanket coverage for months, much of it critical of the Queen, it almost brought an end to her reign.
But she somehow weathered the storm and, at the last minute, did enough to keep the faith of her loyal subjects.
Heaven only knows how Charles will follow this.
Rest in Peace, Ma’am. Your expats salute you!
