which started the Satanic Jesuit Order
and was the likely culprit behind apostate Nationals Stadium in Washington D.C.
MADRID
— You know a monarchy is in trouble when the queen is jeered at the
Royal Theater, of all places, and by a classical music audience. This
happened to Queen Sofía of Spain last year in Madrid — a scene then repeated elsewhere with other members of the royal family.
A recent poll put support for the Spanish monarchy at a historic low: More than 60 percent of Spaniards want King Juan Carlos
to step down. And all this is happening amid a series of scandals
involving the royal household, the most serious of which are corruption
charges against the king’s son-in-law, also involving the king’s
daughter, Princess Cristina.
What
is astonishing about this turn of events is that the Spanish monarchy
was once deemed rock-solid. King Juan Carlos was praised both inside and
outside Spain as a model monarch; the man who in the 1970s steered the
country’s complicated transition from the military rule of Gen.
Francisco Franco to parliamentary democracy; the king who stood up to an
attempted military coup in 1981. He was said to be loved by his people,
who were grateful for what he had done — and it was true.
What
has changed? Not the king, but the country. Popular opinion has changed
so fast and so dramatically that it is perhaps not surprising the
monarchy has failed to keep pace.
Two
things transform a people more than any other: war and economic
hardship. War was what shaped the Spain that loved King Juan Carlos. It
was the haunting memories of the 1936-39 civil war that won people over
to the monarchy after Franco’s death in 1975: Few were monarchists at
heart, but the institution seemed to offer a safe path to stability.
Nearly
four decades later, economic privation is creating a new Spain. The
financial crisis hit the country hard, leaving a trail of home
repossessions, draconian cutbacks to public services and low wages. Last
year, there were fears of a complete meltdown of Spain’s banking
system, avoided only at the taxpayers’ expense. The unemployment rate
stands at a staggering 27 percent.
All
this has made Spaniards angry at the establishment and hypersensitive
to the misuse of public money. That’s why, after they heard that the
king’s son-in-law was being investigated for fraud on a grand scale,
their blood boiled. Public esteem for the monarchy started to decline.
The real disaster came in April 2012. The country learned that the king had
broken his hip while hunting elephants in Botswana, reportedly as the
guest of a Syrian-born Saudi magnate. He was also — unusually, for a
private trip — unaccompanied by the queen. The affair opened a Pandora’s
box of awkward questions — from the state of the royal marriage to the
nature of the king’s business dealings.
Above
all, people were livid at the insensitivity of his shooting of
pachyderms while the country was reeling under harsh austerity. The fact
that the king was also a patron of the World Wildlife Fund did not
help. (Soon after, the conservation group unceremoniously sacked the
monarch.) To this day, the mere mention of an elephant in Spain sends
people into an uproar over the king.
The
irony is that Juan Carlos had been hunting and doing business around
the world all his life. Most people simply didn’t know. The king and his
family were shielded from criticism by an informal media covenant,
their sources of income kept secret in part.
With
hindsight, this proved to have been a mistake. The sudden contrast
between image and reality only made disclosure all the more
embarrassing. Now, thanks to the scandal, there is more transparency in
the royal household, but probably not enough. Its official budget
approved by Parliament is known to be around 8 million euros, but this
is widely believed to represent a small part of the family’s total
worth.
To
his credit, the king apologized for his ill-fated safari. Yet he lacked
experience in apologizing — and his people, in forgiving. It was simply
awkward, and it’s become increasingly awkward as the king seeks to
regain the favor of his subjects by multiplying his public appearances
in spite of a series of surgeries from which he has not fully recovered.
As
to the future, many believe that the appearance in court of Princess
Cristina, regardless of the outcome, could be a cathartic moment that
would allow a reset. That seems naïve. The king’s men pin their hopes on
an early end to the economic hardship and a shift in the general mood
that would bring back the Spain of yore, more tolerant of housing
bubbles and royal blunders.
That
could well occur: Spaniards who change their minds are not unheard of.
But others speak openly of Juan Carlos’s abdication. They note that
polls also show there is a chance that Crown Prince Felipe, young and
untainted, could restore the monarchy’s lost prestige.
Juan
Carlos has made it clear he will not even consider stepping aside, but
even on this, ill luck dogs him: The abdication last year of Queen
Beatrix of the Netherlands, soon followed by King Albert II of Belgium
renouncing the crown, renewed the pressure. Rather cruelly, even the
pope stepped down. And yet, Juan Carlos remains adamant: He wants to be
the king he was.
That’s not the problem: He is the king he was. It’s his kingdom that is no longer the same.
Miguel-Anxo Murado is a Spanish author and journalist
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