Felipe VI Sworn In As Spain's King Thursday June 19,2014

Spain's new king, Felipe VI, has been proclaimed head of state in a ceremony in parliament

Earlier King Felipe received the royal sash from his father, Juan Carlos, at the Zarzuela Palace near Madrid.

He acceded to the throne at the stroke of midnight after Juan Carlos formally abdicated on Wednesday June 18,2014

The ceremony takes the form of a proclamation rather than a coronation. It is the first royal transition in Spain since democracy was restored in the 1970s.

Note
The Spanish Senate on Tuesday June 17,2014 approved King Juan Carlos’s abdication, completing the final parliamentary procedure needed for the proclamation of Felipe VI as Spain’s next monarch.

The upper house of Spain’s Parliament voted 233-5, with 20 abstentions, to approve the abdication law, opening the way for the king’s son, Felipe de Borbon, to ascend to the throne on Thursday June 19,2014
The lower house of Parliament voted by a wide majority last Wednesday to pass the law approving the king’s abdication.
King Juan Carlos will sign the law at a ceremony Wednesday that will be his last act as head of state after nearly 39 years on the throne

A man picks up a Spanish national newspaper with the news of Spain's King Juan Carlos' abdication on the front page

  Juan Carlos ascended to the throne on Nov. 22, 1975, and Felipe de Borbon became Prince of Asturias, the heir to the Spanish Crown, in January 1977.