Casa Real has rightly regretted that the video broadcast by Juan Carlos I this Monday, to praise the Transition and the role he played in it, “does not seem appropriate or necessary.”
It is totally out of time for the Emeritus King to have an address recorded to the Spaniards with a staging that evokes that of his Christmas messages of yesteryearflag of Spain included.
But it is also significant, because it illustrates that Juan Carlos lives in some way imprisoned by the fiction that he is still the King of Spain.
Even more inappropriate is the footage when its status as a promotional video is added to its appearance as an institutional message. Because, in addition to claiming the “exemplary” Transition, Juan Carlos has taken the opportunity to allude to his memoirs, which will be published this Wednesday in Spain.
It is difficult not to read this movement as a maneuver to compensate for the disgrace of having been excluded – in a somewhat illogical way – from the events that on November 21 commemorated the fiftieth anniversary of his own proclamation as monarch.
It is therefore understandable to a certain extent. the frustration of the emeritus, who is relegated to the irrelevance of his self-imposed exile while in Spain the beginning of the democratic journey is celebrated, of which he was undoubtedly the main promoter.
But Juan Carlos cannot forget that, no matter how much the Monarchy is a personal institution, it is, after all, an institution that must and does survive its current holder.
That’s why, has to give up its desire to continually vindicate itselfand to show, on the contrary, the elegance of someone who looks ahead to the good of the Crown rather than his own.
In that sense, no matter how much you framed your comment as a request for support for your son Felipe VIwith this accolade you are actually doing him a disservice.
And this because It is not possible to ignore the discredit that stains the figure of Juan Carlosas a result of the multiple financial and personal scandals in which he has been involved, and which were the ultimate cause of his abdication.
Although it may be tragic to say it, Juan Carlos I has turned out, in the end, to be more beneficial for Spanish democracy than for the monarchy.
Since his departure from Spain more than five years ago, the emeritus has carried out too many gestures that testify his refusal to assume that he has stopped occupying the Head of State. From his numerous return trips to participate in sailing regattas, not always executed with due discretion, to the recent publication of his memoirs in France, which have been another factor of discomfort for Zarzuela.
Of a King who accuses the current monarch in his book of having “turned his back” and of “insensitivity”, and who has aired his “lack of harmony” with the current Queen, it would be said that, rather than ensuring the continuity of his “inheritance”, is more interested in settling scores. And in showing his irritation at not being able to return with honors to Spain, as he would like.
It does not seem very coherent that the emeritus has retired to Abu Dhabi to distance himself and avoid damaging the image of the Monarchy, while at the same time intervening in its vicissitudes with great frequency. As if he were resurrecting that interventionist inclination of his grandfather Alfonso XIII which earned him the coining of a pejorative expression: “bourbonear”.
If Juan Carlos really wants to contribute to the good health that our parliamentary monarchy enjoys, the best service he can do to this cause is to adhere to the terms of the strict institutional disengagement that Felipe VI successfully undertook.
For this reason, it is worth recovering the famous question with which Juan Carlos I abruptly interrupted Hugo Chavez at the 2007 Ibero-American Summit, reformulate it and address it now to him: Juan Carlos, why don’t you shut up?