Not only the forces to the left of the PSOE, the socialists have joined the criticism of the visit of the emeritus king to Spain. The most acidic was that of former vice president Carmen Calvo, who wrote on her Twitter account: “Today temperatures rise throughout the country, great embarrassment in Sanxenxo.”
It is striking that the one who was number two in the Government and who negotiated expatriation to Abu Dhabi with the House of the King in August 2020 used the harshest language. No socialist had used those terms to refer to the visit of the emeritus king. The Government and the PSOE have limited themselves to showing respect for the decision to return to Spain and pointing out that it was a matter that fell to the House of the King. The only license has been to demand explanations about his private businesses and his hidden fortune, although the spokesman for the PSOE leadership, Felipe Sicilia, took another step yesterday and pointed out that he owes “not only an explanation, but also an apology.” But there are also those who ask for restraint, such as the president of Castilla-La Mancha, Emiliano García-Page, because Juan Carlos I “may deserve criticism, what he does not deserve is cruelty.”
In Moncloa it is considered that the trip with all the paraphernalia that has surrounded it does not benefit the monarchical institution. Yolanda Díaz, the second vice president and benchmark for United We Can in the Executive, pointed out yesterday that all this is an “ordeal” and an “agony” for the Crown.
The broad brush was put, as usual, by Esquerra’s spokesman, Gabriel Rufián, who equated the arrival of the king emeritus with the Colombian drug trafficker “Pablo Escobar getting off a private jet” because he also “has been practicing or doing malpractice for 40 years ».
His party will also take the visit to Parliament. In Congress he will ask the Government “if it intends to end the privileges of the Royal House”, and in the Senate he will present a bill to modify the law that penalizes insults to the Crown and insults to Spain.
La Zarzuela, meanwhile, also silently assists the visiting Avars. Since the statement he issued on Wednesday night to report the return of the emeritus, he has made no comment. He has not even informed in the weekly agenda of the Casa del Rey of the meeting that Felipe VI will have with his father on Monday. That day appears blank. It is not known, therefore, what format it will have, if it will be a lunch, a greeting, who will attend, in addition to the King and his mother, Queen Sofía, not even if there will be a photograph of the moment.
The Royal House wants to appear completely normal and has maintained the agenda that Felipe VI had. On Thursday he presided over a ceremony for the presentation of credentials of several ambassadors and this Friday he attended the meeting of the Scientific Council of the Elcano Royal Institute at the Royal Palace of La Granja de San Ildefonso in Segovia.
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