Eyes turn to Felipe VI in the face of an unprecedented institutional crisis and with an expectation equal to that of the message after the Catalan 1-O
The King who, in his eight years at the head of the Spanish parliamentary Monarchy, has gone through crises as severe and disparate as the instability that resulted from the emergence of the ‘new politics’ critical of the Crown, the legal problems of Juan Carlos I -father and predecessor- and a calamity like the pandemic delivered on October 3, 2017 his most far-reaching speech to date. It was the severe response from the Headquarters of State to the separatist attempt of the Catalan independence movement, one of whose legs – Esquerra Republicana – sustains, five years later, the turbulent legislature of the PSOE Government with United We Can. That was a crisis, in truth, so unusual and deep that it is difficult to make comparisons with the rest of Felipe VI’s addresses, especially those congratulating Christmas. But that of this Christmas Eve – the ninth since he acceded to the throne – has aroused a marked expectation before the unusual clash unleashed between the powers of the State that is in charge of the Crown.
At nine o’clock tonight ordinary citizens, public officials and political officials will appear at the King’s traditional Christmas appearance in a context of strong anxiety motivated, this time, by institutional erosion in which two events are intermingled distant in origin -the blockade of the renewal of the Judiciary and the pacts of the Government of Sánchez with the Catalan and Basque secessionists- and that have led to the unimaginable, until this Monday, suspension by the Constitutional Court of a vote in the Cortes Generales . The brake in the Senate on the sudden and express reform of the Government, with the aim of updating the Constitutional Court and reorienting it towards a progressive majority, has ended up being the trigger for an unprecedented outbreak of democracy between the Executive, Legislative and Judicial branches.
THE PHRASES:
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Juan José Laborda – Former President of the Senate.
«Our Constitution is by consensus. When the monarch invokes it, he therefore invokes moderation » -
Alberto López Basaguren – Professor of Law. Constitutional.
«The King has to say without saying. He must be able to convey, in a non-explicit or direct way but that society understands, a call for attention »
With the mechanism of normalized coexistence between institutions seriously resentful, with all the bridges broken between the two great parties on which the leadership of the country has revolved since the Transition and at the gates of a harsh electoral cycle, eyes are turning today towards a Zarzuela which remains in its usual secrecy about the content of Felipe VI’s speech, of which the Royal House is aware of Moncloa. The Government has spent a couple of days avoiding interest in the address of the head of state at a political moment that challenges both the PSOE and the PP; and he does not venture if tonight’s intervention will include a kind of call for moderation, beyond the appeals to the value of the Constitution as the foundation of coexistence that has been truffled Christmas greetings to the Spanish.
Under the umbrella of discretion, the spokesperson for the Executive, Isabel Rodríguez, took refuge yesterday, who limited herself to verifying that the cabinet will follow the words of Felipe VI with “great attention”. At the time, she avoided evaluating whether or not she should refer to the institutional collision and conveyed the “maximum respect” towards the Monarchy and towards who embodies it.
“The King is hardly going to bother us”, they go a little further in the PP, which does not expect Felipe VI “to lead the way for anyone”. The popular do await an “inspiring” speech encouraged by the preservation of “harmony”, with which the head of state will “live up, as he has always been”, to the expectations of the society to which he is addressing . The containment of the two big parties contrasted with the frontal criticism of the secretary of the Organization of Podemos, Lilith Verstrynge, who strips the King of any “democratic legitimacy” to position himself on, in his opinion, “interference of the TC in the Legislative Power ».
The ‘moderates and arbitrates’ margin
The aluminosis infiltrated in the constitutional scaffolding and the risk of discrediting the powers that support it have revived this turbulent week the recurring debate on whether the Magna Carta empowers the King to act and to what extent. Or put another way: what margin does article 56 of the Law of Laws give him when it says of him that “he arbitrates and moderates the regular functioning of State institutions.” It has, come to coincide the former president of the Senate Juan José Laborda and the professor of Constitutional Law Alberto López Basaguren, both very concerned about the drift that the country is facing. But the Spaniard is a King who “reigns but does not rule,” and that restricts what he can do.
THE CONSTITUTION:
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Title II.
It is the one that regulates the monarchical institution, just after the title on fundamental rights and duties. It includes articles 56 to 65. -
Article 56.
Its section 1 establishes that «the King is the head of State, symbol of its unity and permanence, arbitrates and moderates the regular functioning of the institutions, assumes the high representation of the Spanish State in international relations, especially with the nations of its community history, and exercises the functions expressly attributed to it by the Constitution and the laws.
«Felipe VI has the advantage of being a head of state who does not have the risk of falling into populism, because ours is a consensus Constitution. And when the King invokes it, he therefore invokes moderation », maintains the socialist Laborda. For López Basaguren, the monarch has before him tonight a very complex task: that of “saying without saying.” “It must be able to convey, in a non-explicit or direct way but allowing society to understand what it is referring to, a call to attention: not only that what is happening is not right, but that it must be rectified”, argues the professor, who believes, however, that the truly “serious” thing would be that the institutional actors did not attend to “the ‘auctoritas'” that the King may be deploying privately.
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