Of coups and royalty

According to the official narrative, February 23rd was the day everything could have collapsed, the day Spain's fragile and fledgling democracy saved itself (through the providential intervention of King Juan Carlos) from the turbulent tradition of coups and pronunciamientos that punctuates modern Spanish history. But in reality, it was the day Spanish democracy finally took shape as it is today: it already had a Constitution, institutions, and international recognition, and all it needed was a coup. A pat on the back from the state that would function as a self-fulfilling prophecy: you see, how there's the rustling of sabers? You see, how we should be grateful to King Juan Carlos for having given us (and, moreover, saved) democracy? You see, how everything hangs by a thread, and it's best not to make too many demands because everything could fall apart at any moment? Just in case, and so that no one tries to rush things (so that no left-wing extremism or national demands from Catalans or Basques reawaken the fascist beast), we will proceed to implement LOAPA and thus everything will be more harmonious (the acronym LoapaIn Spanish, they mean organic law on regional harmonization(It was, so to speak, a step backward before it even began). To a significant extent, the spirit of the Transition consisted of a cautious, and often cynical, management of the traps set by the powers of the state within the state itself, on the arduous and not-so-exemplary path (there were dozens of deaths) from one regime to another.

Forty-five years after those events, the result is a democracy, yes, but a democracy in which there is a dirty judicial war, or lawfareIt is a poorly disguised and thinly veiled system whose main objective is to return to power the political forces that implicitly or explicitly claim to be the ideological heirs of Francoism. It is also a democracy that has imprisoned pro-independence political and civil leaders, that has persecuted the pro-independence movement through the courts and police, that has had to pass an amnesty law but cannot implement it because the judges have declared themselves in rebellion (!), that still has pro-independence politicians disqualified from holding public office and in exile (or, if they go into exile, in exile) for the crime of insulting the Crown, and that continues to have in force the gag law And in a country where the far right reigns supreme and dictates the public debate, its pace, and the rules by which it unfolds. A democracy in which the former head of state—that Juan Carlos who, for the same price, gave us democracy and saved it—has turned out to be a large-scale tax evader living at the expense of the public treasury, sheltered by a theocratic dictatorship that does not recognize human rights. Now that we have seen the image of a prominent member of the British royal family arrested by the police, it is a good time to reaffirm the importance of radical democracy: democracy is not a finished process; in Spain, it has barely begun. And many want to go back even further than forty-five years ago.