“Your Highness, with the oath you are going to take you are symbolizing your submission to law.” The then president of the Congress of Deputies, Gregorio Peces-Barba, summarized very well, on January 30, 1986, in so few words, the meaning of the act of swearing in the Constitution that the heirs of the Constitution are obliged to take in Spain. Crown. The words were addressed to the then Prince Felipe, but are now perfectly valid for her daughter, Princess Leonor, who will take her own oath (or promise) before the Cortes Generales next Tuesday, October 31. It is an event attended by the Kings, the Government and a multitude of guests with institutional positions, but which has only two protagonists: the Princess and the Cortes Generales. The rest, including the Kings, are pure spectators. In fact, none of them could be present and the act would have the same value of legitimizing the Princess as future head of State.
There was no precedent for Prince Philip’s swearing-in ceremony and there were doubts about whether the President of the Government (at that time, the socialist Felipe González) should intervene, something that seemed interesting to both King Juan Carlos and González himself, perhaps to emphasize the political neutrality of the monarchical institution. It was Peces-Barba’s opposition to the event having the least partisan significance that established the absolutely neutral model that will be followed next Tuesday. “Neither the King nor the Government have anything to do with this act,” the then president of the Congress of Deputies even said. What mattered was the exact form of the oath that the prince had to take, so that “keeping and enforcing the Constitution and the laws, respecting the rights of citizens and autonomous communities” came before his own fidelity to the king. . The Spanish Monarchy, Fish-Beard thought, is not the property of a king, but an institution created by the citizens themselves.
Don Juan Carlos never swore the Constitution, but there is no doubt that he promoted it with all his strength, because he understood perfectly that the only way to legitimize the Monarchy, established by the Franco regime, and supported by the most rancid and Catholics of Spanish society, was to find a genuinely democratic support. “They have just legalized me,” he said publicly the day the Constitutional Commission approved article 1.3, according to which the political form of the State is the parliamentary Monarchy.
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The serious accusations made against Don Juan Carlos for his repeated tax fraud and for keeping part of his fortune in tax havens have damaged the image of the institution, which requires recomposition work by Felipe VI and, from now on, also of Princess Leonor. Felipe VI has introduced some improvements regarding the transparency of the King’s Household, but there is still room for improvement regarding the clarity that must surround all the activities of the Royal Family and a much greater responsibility in this regard than that assumed until now by the Government of the day.
If the emeritus king has undoubtedly caused serious damage to the Monarchy, it would also be fair to recognize that with his institutional work as head of State he established a model that is difficult to reproach. Don Juan Carlos based his success and that of the institution on his ability to keep the Crown away from any type of partisan conflict and scrupulously linked to the 1978 Constitution. That iron political neutrality of the king managed to give the institution a very notable stability and It should be a point of reference in the new role that Princess Leonor will assume from now on.
The swearing-in ceremony next Tuesday represents the commitment between the future heir of the Head of State with the Constitution before the General Cortes. The logical thing would be for all those elected in the last elections to attend, including, of course, the Podemos deputies who legitimately promote the republic, but who recognize themselves as Spanish citizens. It is the independence supporters, who do not accept being citizens of the Spanish State, who have already announced that they will not be present. The curious thing is that they can express themselves against the act precisely because they are Spanish citizens.
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