Madrid spruces up for royal wedding

Spain was today putting the final touches to preparations for tomorrow’s royal wedding between Crown Prince Felipe and former TV anchorwoman Letizia Ortiz.

Former South African President Nelson Mandela was among a stream of dignitaries who arrived at Madrid airport for the nuptials.

Police in blue jumpsuits led bomb-sniffing dogs on searches around Almudena Cathedral, where the couple will wed, and the nearby Royal Palace, venue for a banquet for 1,400 guests from all over the world.

The second of two Awacs surveillance planes on loan from NATO arrived at a base in northeast Spain from which they will patrol the skies over this capital of about four million people.

Madrid town hall authorities declined to disclose the cost of Spain’s social event of the year, but the newspaper El País put it at more than £12m (€17.8m).

Summing up the national obsession with the event, the newspaper El Mundo ran a cartoon showing a family sitting in a candle-lit underground shelter. “No one leaves until the siren announcing the end of the wedding has sounded,” the father tells his small son.

Memories of the recent terrorist train bombing that killed 191 people and wounded more than 2,000 were fresh on people’s minds.

“The Spanish capital was the scene of sad news because of the March 11 attack,” El Mundo said in an editorial. “Now it is news again, but for a much more pleasant reason.”

Decorations include the planting of a million geraniums, tulips, pansies and other flowers along the wedding procession route and other sites VIP visitors may see .

The wedding is rich in novelty. Ortiz, 31, will be the first commoner in centuries of Spanish royal history to be in line to be queen.

The ceremony will be the first royal wedding in Madrid in nearly 100 years, and the first to be held in the main nave of the cathedral.

Normally, weddings there are held in an underground chapel that’s also a crypt.

The prince, 36, met Ortiz at a dinner party in late 2002 and they started dating in earnest the following spring. After a secretive courtship, their engagement was announced last November.

As part of their frenzied final week as singles, the prince and Ortiz observed an old Spanish tradition. They sent dozens of eggs to an order of nuns named for a saint associated with good weather.

The goal is sunshine on their wedding day, but forecasters say there is an 80% chance of rain.