Rome, 1970. Pope Paul VI receives the abbot of Montserrat, Cassià Just. Days earlier, the abbot had opened the monastery doors to some 300 intellectuals, protesting the Burgos Trial against ETA militants, including two priests. The Basque Church revolted against the military trial, which handed down nine death sentences, which Franco avoided with a last-minute pardon. Montserrat was strongly attacked by the dictatorship, and the abbot sought the protection of the Holy See. And he received it: Paul VI reassured him with a "welcome everyone."
Beyond the rules of monastic hospitality that require welcoming pilgrims, and given that this is a political visit, I think of this "welcome everyone" when assessing King Felipe de Borbón's visit to Montserrat next Monday. It's an uncomfortable visit for the monastery, but the King of Spain will be received, like everyone else. The monarch continues the steady trickle of visits to our country to project an appearance of normality, and even popular support (as we'll likely see in Badia del Vallès), but with Monday's visit, he takes a leap forward in quality, because nearly eight years after the unfortunate speech of October 3, he has been invited to the spiritual capital of Catalonia.
The King knows that we have not forgotten that "Scared them!", which has even been presented as the 23-F of his father Juan Carlos, and which lifted him up in Spain to the same extent that it sank him among a good portion of Catalans. When Obama went to Montserrat, we said that, in Catalonia, the former president of the United States could not be in better hands. This difficult visit will require a certain tone, certain gestures.
