When Princess Leonor swears on Tuesday, around 11:30, to “guard and ensure” the 1978 Constitution, as the now King Felipe VI did 37 years ago, she will not be alone nor will she be the only woman in the main gallery or in the chamber. congressional. The heir to the throne will already be supported on that stage by her family, the Queen and Infanta Sofia. And in the image for history, her presence will be recorded next to the president of the Cortes, the socialist Francina Armengol, and five of the nine members of the Chamber Board will be women, and 44% of the parliamentarians (deputies and senators) of the room. The current Government, which is in office, is also equal. It is the great difference, much more than symbolic, of that portrait from January 30, 1986, when male deputies held 94% of the seats. Speakers of the Constitution and deputies from all the parties of that second legislature, the first in which Felipe González’s PSOE swept, reconstruct for EL PAÍS how masculine that Chamber was, how those tables have turned and to what extent it is relevant for the consolidation of democracy that institutions such as the Monarchy submit with this solemn act to respect the values of the sovereignty of citizens.
Only two of the 350 deputies of Congress who were in that institutional oath of the Constitution of the then Prince Felipe are still active and will be in the chamber this Tuesday. One is the acting Minister of Agriculture, Luis Planas, who at the time, aged 33, was a socialist deputy for Córdoba and remembers almost everything about that historic session and the important political context. The other is Ignacio Gil Lázaro, from Vox, who at that time was in Alianza Popular, the embryo of the PP.
The swearing-in of the Fundamental Law of the now King was scheduled and celebrated on January 30, 1986, at the end of the first legislature in power of a full PSOE Cabinet with 202 seats and headed by Felipe González, seven months after the entry of Spain in the European Commission and one day before the controversial referendum for entry into NATO was called, contrary to what had been promised. “Sometimes,” Planas remarks, “these acts are seen as protocol, but they are constitutional acts of strengthening the Head of State and institutional stability. “This oath expresses a commitment to respect and ensure that the laws and citizens are respected and in the current case it reflects the most important change that has occurred in Spanish society since 1986, which is the role of women in Spain.”
The socialist minister highlights that in that Congress there were hardly any women deputies, one in the Board and none in the González Government. In the Cabinet of Pedro Sánchez, also a socialist, 12 of the 22 Ministries are led by women and three are vice presidents. Planas does not believe that it is a coincidence that that and this are socialist governments and boasts: “The PSOE is the only party that persists in the constitutional presentation and has always supported the institutions and the Monarchy.” During the constitutional debate, the socialists made a passionate defense of the Republic and in the vote on the State model, when it was time to vote for or against the parliamentary Monarchy, they abstained.
Adolfo Suárez Illana, son of former President Suárez, then already in the opposition, points out this basic evolution of the PSOE from the moment Juan Carlos I sanctioned the Constitution, on December 27, 1978, two days before its entry into force, through a conversation that his father and the then Monarch had that day: “The PSOE had coldly received that signature from Don Juan Carlos and upon leaving the King mentioned it to my father and he told him: ‘This will improve, no. Don’t worry, my objective was not so much this oath but my commitment that your grandchildren’s can be celebrated and that will be fulfilled.’” It will happen this Tuesday, although the king emeritus will not be present in the chamber to see it because La Zarzuela and the former head of state himself do not believe it is appropriate. Yes, he will be later at the private and family celebration at the El Pardo Palace.
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Miquel Roca, then spokesperson for the pactist and pragmatic CiU led by the former Catalan president Jordi Pujol, present that day 37 years ago in the guest gallery next to the lehendakari José Antonio Ardanza, who was also the speaker of the Constitution, has a vivid memory of that day and will return to Congress on Tuesday as a guest. Roca was already in the historic session in which the king emeritus, Juan Carlos I, sanctioned on December 27, 1978 the Constitution that had been approved a few days before. And he catalogs this Tuesday’s act as “the greatness of what is normal in a State of Law.” Lawyer Roca, who has defended Infanta Cristina in some proceedings, explains: “It says a lot about the democratic solvency of our system that the crown princess Leonor thus commits herself to compliance with the Constitution in an act of normal submission, but with greatness from the highest representation of the country from the institutional point of view to democratic values and popular sovereignty, so that it can be seen that the most important institution of the State is not on the sidelines.” And he delves into the symbolism of the princess being a woman and showing “that there are no masculine or gender preserves in a democracy that is equal for everyone.”
Anna Balletbó, a Catalan PSC deputy for 20 years and then skeptical about the durability of the incipient Monarchy, today emphasizes the relevance of the fact that the heir is now a woman: “We must be happy that we are going to have a queen in Spain. She will be the third after Queen Juana and Isabell II. Sign of the new times, also in Europe. Leonor is a great asset, for the future, to modernize and consolidate the Parliamentary Monarchy and she represents generation Z, which today constitutes 18% of the population.”
Teresa Cunillera, also from the PSC, emphasizes two images. The first about the few women she saw in that chamber 37 years ago. There were 23 in Congress (5.9%). Now there will be 154 deputies (44%) and 113 senators (43.2%). The other is about the relevance that they wanted to give to the event itself: “It was all new and not planned, in that Congress we didn’t even have offices, and Peces Barba, who was very monarchist, wanted to give it pomp and solemnity.”
The idea of the particularity of submission to Parliament is endorsed by the former socialist president Felipe González, who then had his tensions with the president of the Cortes, the socialist Gregorio Peces Barba, over who should take center stage in the event: “It is an act of continuity of Spanish democracy as we voted for and self-proclaimed it in 1978; The sovereign is the Parliament, which is the one that produces the oath, something that does not happen in other European monarchies around us.”
The Vox deputy Ignacio Gil Lázaro highlights his emotion: “Reliving that act after the years means for me a personal opportunity to reaffirm my commitment of loyalty to the Crown as a symbol of the unity and permanence of Spain as established the Constitution”.
Arturo García Tizón, then in the Popular Coalition of Manuel Fraga, highlights his impression that then “the environment was more peaceful and serene than today.” Josep López de Lerma, from CiU, insists that in those years “there was more institutional feeling than now” and corroborates that both he as a member of the Congress Board and Roca attended the 12-O festivities, the Royal Palace or the rounds of contacts with the King for the investitures.
Jordi Pujol is now 94 years old and is in poor health, but he transmits through his fifth son, Oriol, former general secretary of Convergencia, that in 1986 he wanted to be in Congress out of respect for the parliamentary Monarchy, the role played by Juan Carlos I and, above all, to the democratic Transition: “How could I not go? I was a protagonist of the Transition, I value it positively, although now everyone wants to blame it. The monarchical regime was pal de paller or the stick that articulated the haystack of the Transition.” Pujol now remembers that he took advantage of the proximity of that day with the lehendakari to blurt out something that he has portrayed in his memoirs and that he says he supports in his capacity as a historian in reference to the collaboration of its ruling classes with the Spanish State: “You Basques participate in this, you Basques have always been here, we have not.” .
Former President Pujol continues to have a good opinion of Juan Carlos I, of whom he appreciated that he assisted him by telephone on the long night of the February 23 coup (when he told him “calm down, Jordi, calm down”) and of the Royal Family as a whole. . He also thanks Felipe VI, in his memoirs, for the official trip that he made as Prince of Asturias and Girona in April 1990 to Catalonia and recently for the many details that he gave him until sharing the cover on September 20 at the 142nd anniversary party of The vanguard. On the way out, when Felipe VI approached him to introduce him to Queen Letizia, the elderly Jordi Pujol commented, surprised: “Excuse me, you are very tall, how tall are you?” Felipe VI answered him in that cordial tone: “It seems to me that I am shrinking, I no longer reach 1.97”.
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