Ten years of reign. King Felipe of Spain crosses the first finish line of his reign, and Spain is ready to celebrate with the mayor of Madrid who has invited balconies and windows to be dressed to pay homage to the King and the heiress Leonor who was sworn in as the new heir months ago. June 19, 2014 ended Juancarlism, and its protagonist, King Juan Carlos, stepped aside. To give way to his son, Felipe VI who a few days ago handed over to Mario Draghi the European Carlos V Prize.
Felipe, the child who when Colonel Tejero tried to oust Juan Carlos with a coup d’état from the throne (it was 1981) the King kept his father awake throughout the long night of tension in which he spoke to the Spaniards from the small TV screen and averted the effects of the coup. “Stay awake, it will serve as a lesson when it comes to you to reign,” he told him. And Felipe, tired, resisted the lure of sleep.
The moment to reign for the child tested by his father the King arrived in June 2014. When Juan Carlos made the choice to step aside. Thus Spain greeted the Spanish sovereign who had ferried Madrid beyond Francoism, after 36 years of Francisco Franco’s dictatorship, bringing a king and a dynasty, that of the Bourbons, back to the throne.
Thus began the era of King Felipe. And El Mundorightly named this 2024 «The great year of Felipe and Letizia»: ten years since the oath as the new King. E twenty years since the royal wedding in 2004.
Juan Carlos, the son of the Count of Barcelona (the title remained with the Bourbon in exile). Juan Carlos who had led Spain through a rapid economic race, in the Eldorado of the boom season of «Juancarlismo», at 76 years of age decided that it was time to pass the hand to his son Felipe. Thanks to the sentimental scandals due to the “Latin charm” of the King born in Rome. To which would have been added the financial scandals up to the voluntary exile in the United Arab Emirates: «I have been the king of Spain for almost 40 years and I have always wanted the best for Spain and for the crown», Juan Carlos will say as he leaves the throne.
Felipe VI was thus forced by events to be transparent but also of the observance of institutional boundaries in the role of sovereign, his rule. «Felipe, an official King», as described by the daughter of the «red duchess» (Medina Sidonia), hostile to Francoism, Pilar Gonzàles de Gregorio one of the most attentive voices on the Spanish monarchy. Which indicates March 15, 2020 as the turning point for the first tenth anniversary of King Felipe. And he gives credit to the goals achieved by Juan Carlos: «The historical balance of the reign and the services rendered by his father (Juan Carlos) to Spain is incomparable.”
Felipe VI’s strongest and certainly most painful choice in these ten years of reign was actually the one made towards his father on 15 March 2020. While the world and Spain entered the ordeal of covid, the young King he officially renounced his father’s inheritance Juan Carlos, who at the same time had his allowance of around 200 thousand euros per year revoked.
Thus Felipe VI distanced himself from legal troubles and from his father’s scandals. Father from whom he however learned precious lessons. For example, like Juan Carlos, Felipe did not choose the old royal palace in Madrid as his residence, mindful of the advice of an old monarchist who joined Franco’s ranks, Miguel Maura: «Do not reside at the Palacio de Oriente, Your Majesty, it is disastrous for the Spanish monarchy, it is the Versailles of Spain». Juan Carlos chose the secluded Zarzuela, rather than a royal palace a simple country mansion, Felipe lives not far away in the same complex.
Nothing to do with the sumptuous Palacio de Oriente, with its 3,500 rooms, the largest palace in Europe at the center of the celebrations for the tenth anniversary of the King on 19 June. And where Felipe’s wedding banquet was held in 2004 and Letizia.
But not even having listened to the voice of the old monarchist, not even the choice of the “democratic” Zarzuelaspared Juan Carlos an epilogue that certainly when in the mid-1970s he took over the leadership of the country and regained the throne lost by Alfonso XIII, which not even the monarchists believed in anymore, he would never have imagined. Juan Carlos, the champion of the monarchy in a republican key who had followed Maura’s other warning: «Do not surround yourself with well-born people, but with intelligent and modest people who bring the air of the street to court every day».
A voluntary exile – to secure the credibility of his son Felipe — painful all the more Juan Carlos was a beloved, skilled sovereign, capable of ferrying the country through the most difficult waters, but capitulated (as is human) on errors and weaknesses.
Thus Juan Carlos must be recognized for having played a stabilizing role towards the independence forces of Catalonia and the Basque Country region. A very different scenario is what Felipe has been facing for years now with Spain’s increasingly strong centrifugal impulses.
A proof of the hardest tests of the internal tensions that Felipe’s monarchy experiences in February 2020 when February 2020. With his heir Leonor, Queen Letizia and her sister Sofia, he arrived for the solemn opening of parliament… boycotted by around fifty Catalan politicians. “The majority of Catalan, Basque and Galician society rejects the figure of an anachronistic institution that is founded on the objective of perpetuating and imposing the unity of Spain and its laws,” said Gabriel Rufian. And it was not the first time that the opening of parliament was deserted by those who disagree with the unifying power of the Crown.
The number of empty benches was close to that of the first post-Franco session in 1975. A cold welcome, in the February cold, after the stormy welcome of the royal family a couple of months ago, in Barcelona (among images of the king sent to the flames). And it was 2017 when King Felipe openly expressed himself for the unity of Spain raising lively protests.
Enough to understand the complexity of the role played by Felipe in these first 10 years of his reign.
