Castle protest by activists on morning of coronation
WELSH independence activists staged a protest at Caernarfon Castle to coincide with the coronation of King Charles III at Westminster Abbey.
Around 30 members of a group called Embassy Glyndwr held signs and waved the flags of Owain Glyndwr.
North Wales Police attended the gathering which passed off without incident on Saturday.
Protest organiser Sian Ifan described the demonstration as a success and she hoped the pro-royal sentiment sweeping other parts of the UK would act as a catalyst for the Welsh independence movement.
She told North Wales Live on Saturday: “Overall there were around 25 of us and some (local) people even joined. The funny thing is we thought we’d have some sort of hostility from royalists but there wasn’t at all.
The South Wales-based group travelled up from Swansea yesterday. Ms Ifan added: “Today was very successful because we didn’t actually tell anyone we were organising a protest until yesterday morning.
“It shows that there is a change in mood in the country of how we are prepared to stand up to this pompous pageantry. They are spending so much money on this whilst people are suffering in the country. Ever since the Queen died people haven’t got much patience left with the rest of them. This has all been an excercise, to keep the British state intact. We were protesting today because we’ve never recognised them as royalty or having any right to govern us in any case. But then to demand we pay allegiance to (King) Charles whilst he’s on television, well, you have got to be laughing.
“They stole our ‘Croes Naid’ (a holy relic belonging to the Princes of Gwynedd). They won’t ever give us our royal treasures back at all you know. They butchered our princes, they put this castle up in Caernarfon to tell us we’re conquered. Well I say we are never conquered.”
She added: “They may have taken over land, helped themselves to our natural resources, and conditioned the whole nation to believe that we are a conquered people, well I say we are not conquered so long as there are a few of us that are willing to fight back. They will never conquer us. As far as we’re concerned we’ve always been told that Llywelyn was our last prince, well he wasn’t, it was Owain Glyndwr and he never surrendered so neither shall we. It doesn’t matter if you’ve got 18,000 people on the streets with ‘Yes Cymru’ flags. If you are not prepared to come out and fight on every front whenever possible, to make it impossible to govern Wales from Westminster, then you are never going to get your independence.”