A “long farewell” for Queen Elizabeth II.

The queen’s golden carriage, giant puppets, musicians and dancers paraded in London on Sunday, staging the richness and transformation of British culture at the end of the celebrations for the “platinum jubilee” of Elizabeth II.

Celebrations marking the queen’s 70 years on the British throne began on Thursday with a grand military march to Buckingham Palace and will end there after four festive and merry-making days.

The royal house did not specify if the monarch, 96 years old and with growing mobility problems, will appear again.

The day before, during a gigantic rock concert organized in front of the palace, she made a video appearance full of humor together with the famous animation bear Paddington, who recalled the video recorded with James Bond – the actor Daniel Craig – for the Olympic Games in London 2012.

The queen participated in person the first of the four days of great national festivities, but was absent Friday and Saturday after feeling “some discomfort”.

Her health has been a concern since doctors ordered her to rest in October and she had to spend a night hospitalized to undergo medical tests.

Since then, she has been replaced with increasingly relevant acts by her heir, the 73-year-old Prince Charles, in a progressive transfer of monarchical functions by a sovereign determined not to abdicate.

But the transition raises doubts, due to the popularity of Charles much lower than that of his mother, and the crises and criticism suffered by the monarchy, from the estrangement of Prince Henry and his wife Meghan to the attacks on the colonial and slave-owning past of the British Empire.

In a gloomy social context, with soaring inflation that imposes hardship on many Britons, the division caused by Brexit and the 180,000 deaths caused by the pandemic, the jubilee celebrations have been an escape valve for the population and an opportunity to the royal family to seduce her again.

“No one performs pomp, ceremony and air parades like us,” wrote The Sunday Times , while The Observer called the jubilee “part of a long farewell” for Elizabeth II, which began last year with the funeral of her husband, Prince Philip.