King Juan Carlos I and Queen Sofia are in Florida to mark the city of Pensacola’s 450th anniversary. The city was settled in 1559 by Spanish explorer Tristan de Luna. 
This is the latest stop for the King and Queen on their tour of the Carribean which began earlier this week.
When the Spanish royal couple arrived in Pensacola Thursday morning, they were greeted by hundreds of residents waving Spanish flags.
Even more residents – this time schoolchildren – cheered as the King and Queen drove in a motorcade from the airport to downtown to Pensacola.
King Juan Carlos delivered a 10-minute speech from the balcony of the T.T. Wentworth Jr. Florida State Museum, thanking Pensacola for preserving “our common heritage.”
“The Queen joins me to thank you from our hearts for your kind invitation to this beautiful and dynamic city, which contains so much of the shared history of Spain and the United States,” he said. “We have always wanted to visit you.”
The King also cried out “Viva Pensacola!” and the citizens in attendance answered back “Viva Spain!”
King Juan Carlos said the 1,500 men, women and children on Luna’s expedition were “guided by the hope of achieving through hard work a better life for them and their children, the same spirit of so many others who came later to the United States.”
The seeds of that “extraordinary adventure took root and flourished” and paved the way for the development of Pensacola, a city with a “culture and heritage among the richest in North America,” he said.
King Juan Carlos noted Spain’s military role in the Battle of Pensacola in 1783, which took Florida from the British during the American Revolution.
“We are so pleased Spanish military tradition lives in this city nowadays through … our pilots being trained here in Pensacola, the Cradle of Naval Aviation,” he said, speaking about the Spanish pilots who train at Pensacola Naval Air Station.
The royal couple were joined on the balcony by Gov. Charlie Crist, Pensacola Mayor Mike Wiggins, Escambia County Commissioner Marie Young, U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson and U.S. Rep. Jeff Miller.
President Barack Obama was unable to attend the arrival of the royal couple. Earlier this week, he personally called them offering an apology.
So, it was up to Governor Crist to oversee the royal visit.
“Though thousands of miles separate us, centuries of history and culture keep us together forever,” Crist said.
After the speech, the King and Queen walked among the Pensacola residents, shaking hands and speaking to them.
One resident, Suzie Korleski, a native of Spain who lives in Fort Walton Beach, cried out, “Viva Juan Carlos. Viva Sofia.”
Later on, Juan Carlos and Sofia visited Fort George, where the Spanish defeated the British in 1781, and the USS Cabot, a World War II aircraft carrier later lent to Spain.
Today, Juan Carlos and Sofia are in Miami for the Florida-Spain Business Forum, where they will discuss the state’s relationship with Spain.
This visit to Florida is the King’s second visit to the United States since being crowned in 1975.
Pensacola, located off the Gulf of Mexico, was destroyed two years later by a cyclone and was not populated until over a century later by another Spanish expedition.
St. Augustine on Florida’s Atlantic coast, founded by Spanish settlers in 1565, is considered the oldest continually-occupied European-established city in the United States
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