A first version of the speech that King Felipe VI was going to read during the last Military Easter, on January 6, contained an allusion to the Franco dictatorship as “a dark page of our common history and a time of division of the Spanish people, today happily overcome.” That draft was even posted on the Royal Family’s website and was later withdrawn and replaced. for the definitive text.
In the speech that the monarch finally gave before the leadership of the three Armies and the Civil Guard, the reference to the dictatorship was omitted.
The complete paragraph that appeared in the initial version of the speech said the following: “In the 2025 calendar we also have many designated dates: firstly, fifty years have passed since the events that gave rise to the process of transformation of our Armed Forces, since the dawn of our democracy; a process of transformation that began after the end of the dictatorship – a dark page of our common history and a time of division of the Spanish, today happily overcome – and after the arrival to the throne of my Father, King Juan Carlos. A metamorphosis that was vital for the consolidation of democracy in Spain and in which the Crown played an essential role.”
Zarzuela sources consulted by elDiario.es point out that it was “a draft” to which “some elements are incorporated and others are eliminated by extension.” The sources also add that the definitive text is “the only one that is answered”: “Only the speech delivered exists.”
Regarding its ephemeral publication on the Royal Household website, they point out that the draft “has a computer processing process that, in this case, remained in the system.” “It is a purely mechanical issue that was temporarily reflected on the web,” sources say.
In previous speeches, Felipe VI has referred to the dictatorship in critical terms. In 2017 he described Franco’s regime as a period “of hatred and resentment, of disagreement and conflict.”
The deletion this week of that reference to Franco’s dictatorship comes in the midst of controversy over the programming of events organized by the Government to commemorate the 50 years of the arrival of democracy in Spain after the dictator’s death in 1975.
Felipe VI did not attend the first of these events, on January 8, citing scheduling problems, but the Government – through the Minister of Democratic Memory, Ángel Víctor Torres – thanked this week for Zarzuela’s favorable response to participating in other events. later, as one related to the role of the monarchy and an institutional visit to the concentration camps of Auschwitz and Mauthausen.
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