King Felipe VI last Friday during his visit to the Seat plant in Martorell (Barcelona).
When Juan Carlos I abdicated, on June 2, 2014, he left his son Felipe two titles: that of head of state;
and that of head of the Spanish Royal House, the Bourbon dynasty.
For his first position, the King had to deal with the breakdown of bipartisanship, which had begun in the European elections of the previous month and would continue in a long period of instability with four general elections in five years (2015-2019).
In addition, he had to face the Catalan independence challenge and personally intervene with his speech on October 3, 2017.
As head of the dynasty, Felipe VI wanted to turn the page to the scandals that had tarnished the last stage of his father's reign (especially the Nóos case, for which his brother-in-law Iñaki Urdangarin and his sister Cristina de Borbón were already accused) with a exemplary package of measures: a severe regime of incompatibilities for the members of his family;
greater transparency in the accounts of La Zarzuela;
and the prohibition of accepting gifts that exceed pure courtesy.
The most drastic was to cut back the Royal Family, which was reduced to the Kings, their two daughters and the parents of Felipe VI, expelling the King's sisters, brothers-in-law and nephews from their bosom.
However, when last Tuesday
The Confidential
published that the infantas Elena and Cristina had been vaccinated against the covid taking advantage of a visit to their father, an expatriate in Abu Dhabi since August, all eyes turned to La Zarzuela.
It was useless for her to remember that the sisters of Felipe VI are no longer part of the Royal Family and that the Kings and their daughters have not yet been vaccinated and will only do so when they are due by indication of Health.
The difference between the Royal Family (Kings, fathers and daughters) and the King's Family (all his other relatives) is too subtle for the Spaniards to assume, who continue to associate the infantas Elena and Cristina with the Crown.
To make matters worse, the King's older sister was seen the next day going to La Zarzuela.
The House of the King was quick to recall that Elena's mother, Queen Sofía, resides there, without clarifying the reason for the visit.
José Antonio Zarzalejos, author of the book
Felipe VI.
A King in adversity
, underlines that "in the collective imagination, the King's sisters are members of the Royal Family and that is very difficult to change."
In addition, although they are no longer strictly part of it, they are in the succession order of the Crown, they and their children.
"The only way for them to dissociate themselves completely is for them to renounce their dynastic rights, however unlikely it may be that one day they could exercise them," he adds.
In his opinion, the vaccination of infantas has been a new "trip", voluntary or not, to the King's efforts to regain the prestige of the institution by people who "do not seem to be aware of who they are."
All this, he concludes, with the added difficulty posed by the lack of communication in a "broken, unstructured family", some of whose members do not speak to each other and maintain differences "that have become entrenched over the years."
It was the refusal of the Infanta Cristina to renounce her dynastic rights that led Felipe VI to adopt, in June 2015, the most traumatic decision taken until then: to withdraw the title of Duchess of Palma that her father had granted her.
For her part, Infanta Elena distanced herself from Felipe VI because of his decision to exclude her from the Royal Family, which implied that she could no longer represent the Crown in institutional acts, and because of the treatment of the emeritus king, of whom she always was the closest daughter.
According to people who have worked in La Zarzuela, to this is added the de facto separation for decades between Juan Carlos I and Queen Sofía, and the most recent between Felipe VI and his father, from whom he first withdrew the annual allocation of almost 200,000 euros that he received from the State and then invited to leave Spain.
The statement of La Zarzuela of March 15, 2020 not only sealed the rupture between father and son, with the resignation of a hypothetical inheritance and the recognition that the emeritus king had set up an opaque financial structure abroad behind the back of Felipe VI. Instead, it left the head of state out of the game.
Only 24 hours after the state of alarm was decreed, the King had to deal with his family problems instead of going to a country confined and overwhelmed by the pandemic, which he would do three days later, on March 18 .
In the letter in which he announced his departure from Spain, Juan Carlos I alleged that he was doing so so that his son could act as head of state "from peace and quiet."
However, the shadow of the emeritus king has since overshadowed the activities of Felipe VI and the news from Abu Dhabi spoils all efforts to restore the prestige of the Monarchy.
For Zarzalejos, the two fiscal regularizations of the emeritus king (for more than five million euros together) are a “double-edged sword”;
since they can neutralize an eventual complaint for a tax crime, but they suppose a flat confession of having committed tax fraud.
Faced with the idea that removing Juan Carlos I from Spain was the best way to safeguard the Monarchy, seven months later the conviction begins to permeate that his return is the lesser evil.
A temporary return, limited to a few days, which denies with facts the kind that Juan Carlos I is in exile, according to the sources consulted.
For this, it is necessary that members of the Royal Family or the King's family stop being a cause of scandal every week.
