Felipe VI beats his father's pulse

The king emeritus arrived and the car window did not even go down. Not a word, not a greeting, nothing. Inside the vehicle, Don Juan Carlos had to observe, like scenes from a silent movie, the journalists who surrounded the car, jumping so as not to be left behind, gesturing, asking questions, bringing the microphone closer in case the passenger seat window went down a few centimeters.. We can imagine the questions, are you going to visit your son? What have they told you in the Zarzuela? Is there any discomfort? Do your daughters, your grandchildren come to see you…? Through the glass, you could only see the smile of the king emeritus, but without moving his lips, and that half-wedge greeting with his hand, so characteristic of royalty.

Neither was his host, Pedro Campos, his friend from the seventies, when they met at the regattas that now serve as an excuse for the self-exiled king to return to Spain to calm the attacks of nostalgia, after establishing his residence in the United Arab Emirates.. This is how he has chosen it to be able to protect his heritage, only a couple of visits a year. It was last January when he communicated it to the Spanish Tax Agency, and this month of June was the first in which the citizen Juan Carlos de Borbón did not have the obligation to present the personal income tax return in the country that reigned for so many years..

They will no longer catch him as in previous years, when the years of financial engineering of the emeritus to hide his fortune outside of Spain came to light. The absolute opacity of his new tax residence allows him that, not having to explain his money to anyone in Spain, but he has the forced cost of not being able to step on this floor for more than a few days counted a year. Only a few days and in silence, which is the second obligation he has had to assume to continue spending a few days racing on his beloved Sanxenxo beach, perhaps the most painful toll for the king emeritus.

From self-exile, expatriation or fright, as preferred, this is the third visit to Spain made by the person who reigned for 39 years and 7 months after the dictator's death. This silence of the emeritus, this discretion, is not accidental, it is the demonstration that his son has won his pulse.

This time, the emeritus king has arrived in Vigo with the same notoriety that an extravagant millionaire or a rock star from the sixties who comes to lie down in a hammock would have done.. In a private plane and with absolute institutional indifference. It was exactly what Felipe VI wanted, what he expressed and led him to openly confront him on the two previous trips. Above all, on the first visit, in May of last year, when everything ended in a sour and tense meeting between father and son..

In El Confidencial, José Antonio Zarzalejos told it in detail, without a doubt the Spanish journalist with the best information on what is happening in the Royal House since before the abdication of Juan Carlos, which will be ten years old in June 2024. Due to the strict rules of protocol and prudence that are used in the Headquarters of State, any word, any adjective, acquires a special, exponential value.. For this reason, when in the last visit of the emeritus it was conveyed to public opinion that the Royal House considered Juan Carlos's visit to Sanxenxo “a great mistake”, that there was deep discomfort for all this, we can assure that the seriousness of the situation was maximum.

Even more, because apart from being reminded that his visits to Spain had to be short and discreet and that he was not complying; In addition to that, Juan Carlos was violating the regulations approved in 2015 on gifts and favors to members of the Royal Household, of which he continues to be a part.. That was one of the first measures that Felipe VI imposed when he was appointed King of Spain, to send from the beginning a very clear signal of the new time that was coming to the Crown.. Austerity, discretion, exemplarity. And it was not possible that this line of firmness would be broken, precisely, by Juan Carlos I, with public ostentation of luxuries every time he arrived in Spain..

It has already been pointed out here on several occasions that the severity with which the excesses of the citizen Juan Carlos de Borbón must be treated can never tarnish the praise and admiration of his historical role, as promoter and pilot of the Transition with which Spain achieved the unequaled milestone of moving from a dictatorship to a full democracy peacefully, “from law to law”, as that unprecedented strategy of Torcuato Fernández Miranda was summed up. Nothing can muddy that period that belongs to all Spaniards as heritage. Nothing and no one, neither Juan Carlos de Borbón.

For this reason it is so irritating that the person who managed to establish a full democracy in Spain, in the form of a parliamentary monarchy, has become in his last years the main threat, the best asset of those who want to destroy that period of our recent history. and destabilize the country. We can also verify this during this visit: the silence of the emeritus corresponds to the silence of his worst enemies, from the independentistas to the radicals of the left.. This time there are no Echeniques or Ruffians setting fire to the networks with insults and contempt. Of course, we cannot ignore the moment either, these days of deep hangover after the general elections that have truncated the claimed victory of the right. We can all intuit that this same visit from Juan Carlos would be something else and the president in pectore at this time would have been Alberto Núñez Feijóo. Much more if the result of the polls had been a coalition government with the extreme right… In that case, not even the maximum discretion would have spared the scandal of the Montanera left, falsely speculating on the return of the emeritus spoiled by Feijóo. But that is part of what will never be fixed, political demagogy. So the best thing is to stay with what we can verify and celebrate, that Felipe VI has won a new pulse for his father.