A decision made with the ice axe in the jugular of Felipe VI
If the support transmitted in public by the PSOE leaders to the monarchy is sincere, Spain is a country with a government divided on its model of state. That is the best case scenario, a governing coalition that does not agree on the essentials of defending the institutions. But if, as many of us suspect, the claim to the Crown made by the president and the vice-presidents and ministers of his party is circumstantial and at the same level as the most of Pedro Sánchez's statements, which are constantly denied by the facts, Spain is rapidly and blindly heading towards an attempt at a republican proclamation, which will have a veneer of legality similar to that of the one remembered in 1931, redeemed by the events that make it similar to the present moment. The attempt may also be legal and have both legal and legitimate features, with a proposal to change the model of State to achieve two consecutive reinforced majorities in Congress with early elections in between, and an affirmative referendum in which the anaesthetised Spanish public opinion nods its head at the two architects of this gigantic institutional crisis: Sánchez and Iglesias. If this happens, Juan Carlos I's retirement abroad this summer is but a decisive but intermediate stage in the orchestrated plan to turn this ancient country into a centrifugal multinational mosaic without a flag, national sentiment or symbols of unity.
The President's defence of the monarchical institution this week was not exactly an example of impetus. By supporting the Crown in this way, he has implicitly confirmed the ambiguity with which he and his coalition government are moving, divided between those who tweet offensive and destructive phrases against the King and the monarchy, and those who do not tweet but think very much like the former.
This ambiguity allows us to go from one extreme to the other in defense of our first institution, without the citizens being clear about when one is good cop and the other bad, and vice versa.
Not long ago, news reports, not judicial decisions that have not yet affected the emeritus, were described as "haunting and disturbing". Now, Sánchez has completed this peculiar way of positioning himself on the King's father with another phrase for analysis, constructed by the Moncloa plumbing company to distract attention from the real position of the executive: "institutions are not being judged, but people are". Only he knows what position he will defend tomorrow, and when he will align himself publicly in this liquidating debate, which he has clearly assumed, together with his partner in government. For the moment, he feels that the departure of Juan Carlos I from the country, forced by the pressure of the extreme left axe on the neck of the head of state, is enough. And we all know what happens when this instrument of the mountaineers is used metaphorically in the form of a public debate by the Churches and their co-religionists.
Institutions are not judged... for the time being. Until the President and his Monclovite adviser are able to judge the parliamentary monarchy with the implacable harshness of those who decide who is judged and who is not. When it comes to his own party's plundering of almost a billion euros that should have gone to the unemployed, it is not institutions that are being judged but people. But when a political party is mentioned in a court judgment that is not final as the beneficiary of the irregular use of EUR 250 000, then the institution is judged, and the people convicted are put on the back burner for the personal interests of politics. We do not even remember their names. If judging the institution pushes Sanchez to achieve the presidency of the government in a motion of censure, then the trial of the institution (a political party) will be implacable and people will be decisively forgotten.
The head of government confessed in a recent interview that he would like to go down in history as the president who fixed the Spanish economy. He hid that other unavowable objective that every good 21st century socialist has: to overthrow the monarchy and reinstate the republic, that republic of 31, if possible in such a way that the collective imagination of the country erases what happened in the previous 84 years. The economy is going to have a very difficult time in view of the economic cataclysm that has occurred. The latter he feels closer with the departure from Spain of the monarch who brought freedom and democracy.
And the Spanish ferragosto is going on with summer entertainment like this, without the citizens having to think much about the seriousness of the contagion and without them hardly knowing that the government has asked the EU for the rescue of 20,000 million for its anti-shock plan. A ransom that will force Sánchez and Calviño to explain how they will use every last cent of the Sure.