What's going on between the king and Santiago Abascal?

BarcelonaIn October 2020, during the motion of censure that Santiago Abascal presented against the Spanish president, Pedro Sánchez, the representative of the far-right, Ignacio Garriga, ended his speech from the podium of the Congress of Deputies with these words:Long live King Felipe VI, long live the King of Spain!If we go back further, to the round of consultations the King held for Sánchez's first investiture in 2019, Santiago Abascal conveyed his "loyalty" to Felipe VI and thanked him for the Crown's stance in the speech against the October 1st referendum on October 3rd, 2017. What has happened in just so that the far right can propose the monarchy Next Friday at the event for its 50th anniversary?

To begin with, it's not new for Vox to be absent from an event presided over by the King. It already happened on October 12th, at the traditional reception presided over by the Head of State on Hispanic Day, a gesture that until then had only been made by republican or separatist forces. The far right excuses itself with its rejection of Pedro Sánchez —"we are not going to participate in the farce of the government, which is an ode to Sánchez's totalitarian regime," they said yesterday—, but the distancing from the Royal Household is evident. There are three key points that explain it:

• The amnesty law.

With the PSOE-Juntos pact on the amnesty law, far-right sectors were asking King Felipe VI not to sign the legislation, a constitutionally required step for any law to come into effect. "The King has been forced by this government to sign a law that delegitimizes the speech he gave on October 3," said the spokesperson in Congress, Pepa Millán, at the time. Likewise, far-right groups frequently attended the demonstrations in the center of Madrid. Spanish flags with the royal coat of arms cut outThey were also demanding that the Royal Household take action regarding the PSOE's pact with the separatists. But King Felipe VI simply signed the law without further ado.

• Israel

The other turning point was the war in Gaza. Abascal's party denied the genocide and openly supported Israel, in contrast to Pedro Sánchez's gestures in favor of Palestine. For this reason, they also did not take kindly to King Felipe VI's speech at the United Nations General Assembly. where he denounced an Israeli "massacre" against the Palestiniansalthough he avoided the term genocide"Socialist pamphlet," retorted MEP Hermann Tertsch.

• Electoral competition

The reign of Juan Carlos I already struggled to win over the far right, which challenged the pact of the Transition. But beyond the traditional forces of Falangism, the new ultra-right sectors that draw on protest votes and anti-establishment rhetoric also clash with Felipe VI. One of Vox's electoral competitors, the party "The Party's Over," led by Alvise Pérez, openly criticizes the head of state, which also puts pressure on Santiago Abascal to compete on that front. Regarding the king's signing of the amnesty, Alvise Pérez said: "If what he's doing is a mere formality, why do we have a king and not a notary? [...]. What do we want him for if he can't even protect the constitutional order and signs a law that pardons the coup plotters?"

The result of all this is that at the commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the Crown, only the PSOE and the PP will be represented. Neither the far right nor the separatists nor any other of Pedro Sánchez's partners will be present. This image exemplifies how, over the years, the Transition has not gained more consensus, but quite the opposite.