Barbados has become a new republic this Tuesday and by doing so it has ceased to have the Queen of England, Elizabeth II as head of state.
It is a historic day for the island Caribbean, which completes the step after its Prime Minister, Mia Motley, said in an interview with the BBC that “it was time to completely leave our colonial past behind.”
The Prince of Wales flew to Barbados on Monday to attend the handover ceremony at National Heroes Square. He did so as a representative of Elizabeth II, but also in his capacity as successor at the head of the Commonwealth, the community of nations with origins in the British Empire of which Barbados will continue to be a part.
Although it is constituted as a new republic, Barbados will continue to be one of the 53 territories that make up this community with origins in the British imperial past .
British sovereign Elizabeth II reigns in 15 from them. Monday was the last day she did so in Barbados.
The territories in which Elizabeth is queen encompass the more than 15 . 000 kilometers that separate Buckingham Palace in London from the small island of Tuvalu, the most remote of the places under his reign, in the middle of the ocean Indic.
The reason? Although most of the territories and colonies under British rule achieved their independence during the decolonization period of the decades after World War II, many of these became constitutional monarchies and maintained Elizabeth II as her queen and head of state.
Several are found in the American continent. Most are islands in the Caribbean Sea , although the list includes the second largest state on the planet and the largest in America: Canada.
The others are: Antigua and Barbuda, Bahamas, Belize, Grenada, Jamaica, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines .
The British monarch is also the “symbol of the free association ”of the 53 members of the Commonwealth , although membership in the group does not imply submission to the Crown. That is, in them he is the main political figure, but not necessarily queen.
Colonies and territories
To the states mentioned must be added the so-called “British overseas territories”, which are a set of colonies and territories that did not become independent.
In the Western Hemisphere, this list includes the Malvinas / Falklands Islands, as well as Anguilla, Bermuda, British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, Montserrat; and the Turks and Caicos Islands.
As they are constitutional monarchies, the role of Isabel II as head of state of these countries is mostly symbolic and representative, and depends on the current legal system approved by the authorities of each state.
But Queen Elizabeth was sometimes close to “losing” some of the countries in his long collection.
On 2016, the Governor General of Jamaica, Patrick Allen, proposed to pass a constitutional amendment “to replace Her Majesty the Queen with a non-executive president as Head of State.”
But as long as that does not happen, the Queen of England will continue to be of the United Kingdom and others 15 countries.
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