For several years, Spanish state nationalism breathed a sigh of relief: it had found in Felipe VI a king even more suitable and more devoted to the unyielding principles of Spain's sacred unity than his father, Juan Carlos, who was too frivolous and too fond of money, women, and the high life. More austere and more preparedAs they often repeated (nationalisms always tend to thrive on believing their own lies), Felipe VI ascended to the throne in 2014, precisely as a consequence of a scandal involving skirts, elephants, and money starring his father, and had his baptism of fire—perhaps it would be more accurate to call it that—in 2017, when he delivered an infamous speech criminalizing Catalan independence just after the equally infamous police actions of October 1st. It was, as it has been called countless times, one How scary! pronounced by the head of Spain, which kicked off the judicial and police persecution, and the media and social breakdown of Catalan separatism, which has taken place during the following years (and to which a part of the separatists themselves have collaborated, with idiotic fervor).
Now, Felipe VI has acknowledged, before the Mexican ambassador to Spain, that during the Spanish colonization of the century following Columbus's arrival in America in 1492, "many abuses" occurred, and the monarch's honeymoon with Spanish nationalism (both state and otherwise) has finally ended. The relationship had already soured with the way the current royal family disposed of the emeritus king, a move that offended supporters of Juan Carlos ("I'm not a monarchist, but I am a Juan Carlos supporter" was a slogan repeated for decades) and that brought to the surface—generally through the surface, and generally through the surface—courtly intellectuals who had previously remained largely hidden. But the colonization of America, like food, is not something to be trifled with: even Feijóo has reacted to the words of the King of Spain, who embodies the indissoluble unity of the State enshrined in the 1978 Constitution, by calling them "nonsense."
The nationalist narrative about the extermination of the original American peoples at the hands of Spanish troops and colonists is a perfectly representative example of what Milan Kundera described as "the provincialism of large nations": a narrow-mindedness that consists, among other things, in the conviction that the abuses of power committed by the Spanish were justified. And even positive: according to Spanish nationalism, the "Conquest" (as they call it) gave the indigenous peoples the opportunity to emerge from primitivism and embrace civilization, the Catholic religion, and most importantly: the Spanish language, in whose name thousands of people were also murdered. So that they would learn to speak "in Christian"It happened five hundred years ago, yes, but the mentality endures and is alive today."
