The Talking King of Gaza: For Domestic Consumption Only

The king spoke before the UN, and the newspapers reserved a spot for him on the front page, as he has the usual T-shirt for life on the front pages. And, although the headlines are neutral, there are details that show that his speech has not delighted the right-wing press, which has described what is happening in Gaza as a "massacre." The World, for example, relegates it to a small module, while when the royal breath combs more in their favor the generosity in square centimeters is much more abundant. The monarch avoided talking about genocide, so the newspapers that most justify Israel's role can include their quote without having to make strange semantic streaks.

In any case, a review of the international press shows that the impact of Felipe VI's speech before the United Nations assembly was between squalid and null. In the New York Times, on the BBC, on CNN, on Fox News, on The Stamp, in Le Monde...or is not mentioned, or is done so only in passing with one or two formulaic phrases. Only in the Guardian I've seen a minimal account of his measured words, and what is the front-page headline in the Spanish press is half a sentence because the other half is the reminder that the return of all the hostages is also being demanded. Thus, the profusion of coverage in Spain fuels the narrative of a king who is a major international actor, and, in the process, the right inflates it and takes advantage of it to sell him as an (improper) countervailing power to Pedro Sánchez. But the reality is that his public words are always supervised by the government and, in any case, the impact on the overall news narrative is negligible. I suppose that shouldn't surprise me either. If executive policy is already quite hijacked by narrative, what is already directly symbolic has ended up becoming a convention that is hollow inside.