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The funeral procession with the remains of the former president of Chile Sebastián Piñera, who died this Tuesday in a plane crash, arrived at the old headquarters of Congress, in the center of the Chilean capital, where he will be laid to rest and will receive the last farewell of the Chileans after to the state funeral scheduled for Friday. The coffin, which delayed its departure from the Santiago de Chile airport, where it arrived this morning from the southern city of Valparaiso, arrived escorted by the militarized Carabineros police and numerous vehicles with family and friends, and amid cheers and tears of dozens of people waiting, despite the strong heat, outside the building.
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The coffin, wrapped in the Chilean flag, was solemnly introduced into the former National Congress on the shoulders of a gala group of the presidential escort number 1 of the Grenadier Corps, to the rhythm of a military funeral march, and among the overwhelming silence of the dozens of people who have gathered outside, waiting for the wake.
The Presidential Escort Regiment No. 1 “Granaderos” escorts the coffin with the body of former Chilean president Sebastián Piñera in front of the Palace of the National Congress in Santiago. (Photo by Pablo Vera/AFP).
/PABLO VERA
WATCH: LIVE | Sebastián Piñera, former president of Chile, dies in a helicopter accident
At mid-morning, the lifeless body of Sebastián Piñera, who was piloting the crashed helicopter, had arrived from Lake Rango, the site of the accident – 800 kilometers south of the capital – he had traveled aboard a Chilean Air Force plane. (FACh) and landed in the Group 10 hangar at the Santiago airport, where he was received with honors by President Gabriel Boric and several of his ministers.
Relatives accompany the coffin of former president Sebastián Piñera after his arrival on a Chilean Air Force (FACh) plane to Santiago. (EFE/ Ailen Díaz).
/ AILEN DIAZ
The coffin, covered with a Chilean flag, was taken off the plane by FACh soldiers, while a military funeral hymn was playing, and transported a few meters in a wooden carriage, escorted by his children and some of his grandchildren, to a car.
🔴 Crowd follows the route of the funeral procession of former president Sebastián Piñera
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Piñera’s wife, Cecilia Morel, traveled on the plane with part of her family and was warmly hugged by Boric upon arrival at the airport.
The wife of the former president of Chile Sebastián Piñera, Cecilia Morel, along with the president of Chile, Gabriel Boric, witness the moment of the coffin’s arrival in Santiago. (EFE/ Ailen Díaz).
At the former headquarters of the National Congress, the former ruler will first be held in private by the family and his closest collaborators, and in the afternoon the venue will be opened to the public so that Chileans can say their last goodbye.
The Chilean Foreign Minister, Alberto van Klaveren, announced that the State funeral will be held this Friday morning at the Metropolitan Cathedral of Santiago and, “once the mass is over, the remains will be transferred to the Parque del memoria Cemetery, but not before passing in front of La Moneda, where a tribute will be paid to him.”
The minister assured that the final details of the funeral are still being finalized and indicated that so far “they have no confirmation of which international leaders will participate in the funeral.”
At 3:30 p.m. local time on Tuesday (6:30 p.m. GMT), the helicopter piloted by Piñera, along with three other people who managed to save themselves, crashed shortly after taking off over Lake Ranco, a tourist resort located 800 kilometers away. south of Santiago, where he used to spend summers with his family.
The regional prosecutor of Los Ríos, Tatiana Esquivel, confirmed this Wednesday that the cause of death of the former president was “asphyxia due to submersion.”
“This forensic data allows us to develop a more probable hypothesis of what the dynamics of this plane crash would have been like. In parallel, there is a technical team in Lago Ranco that is dedicated to carrying out all the respective expertise,” he added.
Chileans leave floral offerings at the entrance to the house of former Chilean president Sebastián Piñera. (EFE/ Ailen Díaz).
At the moment no more details will be offered, so it does not seem that the two main versions that are being considered can be clarified: a technical problem resulting from the bad weather conditions in the area, with strong wind and rain, or some physical problem for the president. , which would have caused him to lose control and not be able to remove his seat belt.
Piñera, who governed Chile in two non-consecutive terms (2010-2014 and 2018-2022), is the second former president to die after the return to democracy in 1990. The first was the Christian Democrat Patricio Aylwin, leader of the Chilean transition in 2016. .
A tireless politician and successful businessman, with one of the largest fortunes in the region, in 2010 Piñera became the first conservative president to reach La Moneda after the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990) and embodied a more renewed right. that he was able to exercise some self-criticism on the regime.
The country’s recovery after the devastating 2010 earthquake, the rescue of the 33 miners trapped for more than two months in the San José mine, the wave of demonstrations in 2019, the pandemic and the early vaccination against the coronavirus are some of the milestones that marked his two governments.