Marina Artusa
08/11/2020 - 17:16
- Clarín.com
- World
"What can jeopardize the stability of the government of Spain and the very quality of democracy is that politicians elected by the citizens appear as accomplices of the privileged situation of the monarchy that is questioned by the majority of citizens."
Gerardo Pisarello says it , the man from Tucumán who today is a deputy and secretary of the Spanish Congress Bureau and spokesman for the Foreign Affairs Committee.
The Argentine, jurist and professor of Constitutional Law at the University of Barcelona, reflects on the differences between the partners of the coalition government PSOE-Unidas Podemos in the face of investigations into alleged fraudulent handling of money by King Emeritus Juan Carlos de Borbón and his disturbing change of domicile outside of Spain.
On Monday, August 3, the Royal Household published a letter from Juan Carlos to King Felipe VI, on the throne for six years when his father abdicated, in which he informed him that he planned to leave Spain. Without revealing which would be the seat of his exile, there was speculation all week about possible abodes for the emeritus king. Neither the Royal House nor the government revealed where he was until a photo of Juan Carlos wearing a chinstrap and getting off a private plane at an Abu Dhabi airport circulated.
Son of Angel Pisarello, a lawyer for the defense of political prisoners who was kidnapped and assassinated in '76, and grandson of Andalusian Republicans who emigrated to Argentina, Pisarello has spent more than two decades in Spain, where he received his doctorate in Law and, supported by the Catalan wing of Pablo Iglesias' party, he was deputy mayor of Barcelona between 2005 and 2019.
"As the son of a disappeared person, I cannot forget that Juan Carlos I was the first head of state to visit the Videla dictatorship in Argentina and that of Pinochet in Chile," Pisarello told Clarín . Since 1978, it has shown that commercial and economic objectives take precedence over any other consideration regarding respect for human rights. "
The jurist Gerardo Pisarello, born in Argentina and now a deputy in the Congress of Spain. / EFE
Regarding the Spanish Crown, the Argentine is blunt: "The Spanish Constitution says that the political form of the State is the parliamentary monarchy and the monarchy restored after 1978, in practice, has never functioned as a parliamentary monarchy", says Pisarello .
-Why?
-Because it has not been subject to the democratic principle, to elementary principles of transparency and privileges that have been corrupting the institution itself have been recognized. The Bourbon monarchy has had super criminal protection that has prevented it from being the subject of sufficient public scrutiny.
That of Spain "has never functioned as a parliamentary monarchy."
-How did it get to that?
-Books, journalists have been censored, there are people who have ended up in prison for writing songs or articles referring to the monarchy and that has prevented sufficient public and social control over the king. That is why a procedure was necessary abroad, in Switzerland, and for the international press to denounce something that in Spain, despite being known, was impossible to denounce.
-According to President Pedro Sánchez, the monarchy is not being questioned because "people and not institutions are judged." For you, if the presumptions were verified, would we be facing the corruption of a person or of the Crown?
- "And that not only affects Juan Carlos. The big question is whether Felipe VI himself had knowledge or was involved in all these types of actions. Today we do not know. Presumably criminal actions of Juan Carlos are being known and many have their origin in 2008. Felipe VI was 40 years old. He was not a child who ran around the Zarzuela Palace without knowing what was happening. The principle of inviolability of the king is actually used as a carte blanche to commit crimes even through private acts in which the king is not fulfilling any type of public function.
"It is not only the corruption of Juan Carlos but of an entire institution surrounded by privileges and opacity."
-If he committed crimes, should the King Emeritus be able to stand trial?
- I believe that the king must not only be able to be tried in the courts but must be able to be investigated by the Cortes Generales. It seems fundamental to me. If it is a parliamentary monarchy, it means that the monarchy is a purely symbolic element and that the weight of political life must be in the main seat of the popular sovereign which is the Congress. If that is so, which is what the Constitution says, the king emeritus should be able to be investigated by Congress. And the current king, his son, Felipe VI, should be able to explain in Congress everything he knows about his father.
-From the criminal point of view, could Juan Carlos be prosecuted as of 2014, when does he stop being king and lose his inviolability?
-The figure of criminal inviolability aims to guarantee the independence of the institution. Parliamentarians are inviolable because of declarations we make in the Chamber to protect our freedom of expression and ideology. If any deputy committed an act of corruption, he could be tried. This suggests that, in the case of the monarchy, the principle of inviolability contained in the Constitution works in a similar way. It is impossible to think that inviolability serves to cover crimes of the king in which it does not fulfill any institutional function. After the abdication, it is very clear that this is no longer the case. The debate is before ...
-What is your position?
-Every time there are more jurists who are saying that before 2014 the king is only inviolable for acts that he performed as king, fulfilling institutional functions, but not for those private acts. If the king is presented with a paternity suit, for example, it could be raised. If you are sued for crimes that have nothing to do with your public performance, you must be able to be tried. That is my position. That is why I say there is an anomaly.
-What challenge does the debate on the monarchy present for the coalition government, where the PSOE is more negotiating and Podemos sees the opportunity to propose what to do with the Crown?
-I think that after the Transition in Spain there were many republican people linked to the Socialist Party who accepted the monarchy in political life because they considered that it was the price to pay for social peace and because they thought that the king was going to play an exemplary role and symbolic. And I think that generation today feels betrayed. The PSOE at this time what it is trying to propose is that the investigations into Juan Carlos I have to take place in the judicial sphere and not in Congress itself. For us it is a mistake. And then he is trying to separate the figure of Juan Carlos from that of Felipe VI, but I think it is an objective that can hardly prosper. This is where the PSOE is not being, in my opinion, brave enough and is wrong.
- Does this issue affect the credibility of the government?
-The coalition government that exists now is important so that in a moment of crisis there is a response that allows to protect the working family, small and medium-sized companies. That is the goal of a progressive government, but for these social goals to be possible, we cannot send the public a message that instead, while ordinary citizens have to pay their taxes, there is an institution that is the monarchy. that it is armored against that and cannot even be investigated when there are such great accusations. It seems to me that this is a challenge shared with the Socialist Party.
- What political cost can this debate have? Can you put the current Legislature at risk?
-What generates more instability is trying to sweep under the rug some actions by the emeritus king that, in the case of other parliamentary monarchies or other heads of state, would be absolutely intolerable.
-Would a referendum be the next step?
- The problem of the monarchy is that it is an institution without legitimacy of origin. It has not been voted on, it is hereditary and it has to build its legitimacy. They usually build it with public exemplarity. When there is no exemplarity, the legitimacy crisis reopens and, in a democratic system, it should be resolved through a referendum.
-What will happen with the investigations?
- I do not have much hope regarding the action of the Supreme Court. I have doubts that it will enforce equality before the law of all citizens, including citizen Juan Carlos de Borbón. If the Cortes Generales cannot investigate, we would be facing a fraudulent attempt to ignore the Constitution that establishes the subordination of the monarchical principle to the democratic principle.
-However, there were attempts to create commissions in Parliament and they did not prosper ...
-Different republican political forces presented requests for investigation that until now have been denied by the very table of Congress with poorly founded legal arguments. Right now we are filing an appeal against the refusal to open an investigation commission on something as simple as the commercial and diplomatic relations that existed between Saudi Arabia and the Kingdom of Spain.
Madrid. Correspondent
CB