The King and the president of the Community of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, on June 8 at an economic forum in Alcalá de Henares (Madrid). Juanjo Martín / EFE
Three days after involving the King in the political debate on the pardons of the independentists convicted of sedition and embezzlement, the controversy over the words of the Madrid president continues: far from rectifying, Isabel Díaz Ayuso included the concepts of "cheating" and " humiliation "and dragged in his statements the leader of the PP, Pablo Casado -" thinks the same as me "-. The experts consulted explain why Felipe VI cannot refuse to sign a government decision and warn of the risk of introducing the possibility of the opposite in society. It is not the first attempt to pressure the Monarch for the Catalan sovereign challenge, they point out, but it is the first time that it has been done from within a party that occupied the Government (although the PP has rushed to publicly correct Ayuso).
“The King”, says Juan José Solozábal, professor of Constitutional Law, “does not express his will when he sanctions a law or signs a decree.
It limits itself to fulfilling its role in a parliamentary monarchy.
You are also not responsible for what you sign.
To propose something else is absurd and a lack of constitutional culture ”, he adds.
The acting president of the Community of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, last Sunday.
José Antonio Zarzalejos, specialist in monarchy and author of
Felipe VI, a king in adversity,
He does not believe that Ayuso made those statements due to ignorance. “It is a fraudulent and deceitful use of the figure of the King to introduce him in emotional terms into a political debate and that is very dangerous, because it questions one of the pillars of our constitutional system, the parliamentary monarchy. Signing is not a humiliation, it is the fulfillment of your duty; and, far from humiliating him, it magnifies him because we can assume that it is not to his total liking, "he says. “Ayuso is playing with the emotionality of what the King represents, who has no conscientious objection, and with the ignorance on the part of society about what exactly a parliamentary monarchy entails to exorcise the debate, which is what he usually does. Since 1978 I do not remember a case in which something of this nature has been raised, "he says.
The King does not have executive powers, he acts under the political direction of the Government. His speeches - except for the Christmas Eve speech, the most personal - are drawn up in the competent ministries. The King can personalize them, but not change the message, and, in fact, PP and PSOE have mutually accused each other in the opposition of charging those interventions in a sense favorable to the Executive.
The Constitution, Solozábal recalls, attributes to the Monarch the role of referee and moderator and "symbol of the unity and permanence" of the State. Felipe VI seized on the latter to deliver, on October 3, 2017, two days after the illegal referendum in Catalonia, a speech on the independence challenge. On that occasion it was the King who took the initiative. He did, says Zarzalejos, "when observing the failure of the State's management and seeing that the president [Rajoy] did not seem to react to the seriousness of the events." Don Felipe consulted, among others, Pedro Sánchez and Miquel Iceta, who suggested including the word "dialogue" in his speech, and Rajoy himself. “With more or less reluctance, the president gave him his support. If I hadn't done it, I wouldn't have been able to deliver a speech of that depth, ”adds Zarzalejos.
Message from Felipe VI after the illegal referendum in Catalonia in October 2017.
Criticism of the speech
That intervention was highly criticized by Catalan nationalism and by United We Can and the PNV.
"As president of a parliamentary group that represents more than five million Spaniards," declared Pablo Iglesias, "I say to the unvoted King: not in our name."
A year later, the then leader of Podemos celebrated what he considered a “change of tone” for the Monarch in his Christmas Eve speech: “He talks about coexistence and respect for diversity.
Thus, he implicitly recognizes that he was wrong assuming the theses of the right ”, he said.
For Zarzalejos, "it is normal for there to be friction" from time to time in the relationship between the Government and the Head of State. And he cites the famous clashes between Elizabeth II and Margaret Thatcher. The specialist does not believe that there has been real pressure on the Crown. But the sovereign challenge has heated up spirits. A group of retired soldiers sent a letter to the King last November accusing the Government of endangering national unity. The promoters sought to provoke a cascade of similar letters to pressure the head of state. "The King is the head of the Armed Forces, but he has no operational command," recalls Zarzalejos.
One of the examples of this tension was the absence of Felipe VI in the act of handing over dispatches to new judges in Barcelona in September of last year.
"The King wanted to attend and in this case it was not so clear that the Government could prohibit the movement of the Monarch through the national territory, but, without that endorsement, Don Felipe did not attend the event," recalls Zarzalejos.
The PP has also accused the government of pressuring Felipe VI to break with his father and the king emeritus to leave the country.
The decisions were reached by consensus in a very small group from La Moncloa (Carmen Calvo and Iván Redondo) and La Zarzuela (Jaime Alfonsín), and Zarzalejos believes that "it was a success that they were not governmentalized."
The day before, the leader of the opposition was informed of the departure of the emeritus king of Spain.