miquel iceta (Barcelona, 1960), first secretary of the party of the Socialists of Catalonia and current minister has a very fresh memory of October 3, 2017. Because for days before he had feared the worst and therefore tried to do everything in his power to avoid it. And the worst, Felipe VI’s speech, happened.
Several weeks earlier, according to the account of ice cream to this chronicler a few months ago, Philip VI contacted the first secretary of the Socialistes de Catalunya party to examine the approval of the laws that paved the way in Parliament for the illegal and prohibited referendum on October 1, 2017. Both exchanged their points of view and, The King apparently found the comments and suggestions of the leader of the Catalan Socialists instructive.
Hours after the day of Sunday, October 1 and the special operation to repress the referendum, Iceta learned that a public intervention by the monarch was being prepared. He spoke with the leader of the Socialist party, Pedro Sanchez.
-Pedro, the King is going to make a speech on television. He worries me a lot. I have been with him, as I told you at the time, and I would like to give him my opinion. I think it is necessary to do everything possible so that things do not get worse…
-Yes, Miquel, they have consulted me. But I think it will be very difficult to influence what he intends to say… I have said that the dialogue must be to be present. But the shots do not go there.
Peter, will you let me try? Since I’ve already talked to him about what was going on, it’s only natural that I now feel like telling him a few things.
-Of course Michael. Try it.
Iceta was now more overwhelmed. And more obstinate in trying to make the king listen to him.
He called the House of His Majesty the King and had a conversation with Jaime de Alfonsín, the head of the Royal House.
-Jaime, we have spoken, as you know, several weeks ago with His Majesty about the situation in Catalonia and I answered all the questions that he asked me. Now that he is going to speak to the whole country, it seems to me that some reflections on what happened on the street on 1-O could help him. And I want to convey to you that we need a speech of reconciliation, of dialogue. But this requires talking to him.
-I understand you, Miquel, but it won’t be…
-We have to try Jaime. Because it can not be?
-Because the King is going to address a wounded nation, which was assured that it was not going to vote and that nation has seen how the opposite was done, how it was deceived and the vote was made.
It was going to be no. And it was no. Even worse. Because it fueled the fire that was still alive, as on the other hand, it was possible to verify that same day of October 3, the day of the protest strike due to the repression and the clashes of 1-O.
The role of Mariano Rajoy
Why the President of the Government, Mariano Rajoywho ordered his Minister of the Interior and he ordered the designated coordinator, Colonel of the Civil Guard Diego Pérez de Los Cobos, to squash the vote did not appear before the cameras neither on 1-O nor on 2-O nor that same 3-O ?
Why didn’t Rajoy tell him, who had read hours before on October 3 at Zarzuela before Philip VI the speech, that it was up to him to say, that it was better to preserve the figure of the monarch in line with what is stated in the Constitution?
Indeed, yes, in the letter and spirit of the Magna Carta, article 56.1: “The King is the Head of State, symbol of its unity and permanence, arbitrates and moderates the regular functioning of the institutions, assumes the highest representation of the Spanish State in international relations, especially with the nations of its historical community, and exercises the functions expressly attributed to it by the Constitution and the laws”.
The role of the King
In short: the King as arbitrator, moderator, mediator. Some functions that, according to the lawyers of the Congress of Deputies, are inspired by the work of Count Vicente Santamaría de Paredes, José María Gil-Robles, Miguel Satrústegui Gil-Delgado and the Professor of Constitutional Law Pedro de Vega. The result was that on October 3, who governed, Rajoy, delegated his Government to the one who reigned but did not govern, Felipe VI, that is, they did “as if” he ruled, they took away the king’s suit that enabled him, as a constitutional monarch precisely to arbitrate, moderate or mediate.
And because? Because what they call in the United States ‘the powers that be’ or the established powers needed to take advantage of the situation “as if” It was a coup d’état to induce a parallelism in the collective memory between 23-F and 1-O. Just as Juan Carlos I marked his speech that day, this would be the baptism of fire of Felipe VI. The kingdom had to be anchored or cemented.
And there was fire. The images of the National Police and the Civil Guard were still going around the world when the King and the Prime Minister prepared it and launched it on television to create the original virtue of the reign of Felipe VI.
And still, after reading the sentence of October 19, 2019 on the ‘procés’, the right wing of this country continues with the same milonga of the coup d’état by which it was justified on the night of October 3 to add fuel to the fire.
The blockade of the CGPJ
Those who today violate the Constitution and happily disobey it – the Popular Party and unrepentant conservative members – by blocking the renewal of the General Council of the Judiciary (CGPJ) since December 4, 2018 and who do their best to maintain a constitutional Court in a coma with their simple refusal to appoint the substitutes for the four magistrates for four terms expired since June 12, 2022, they do not even read what they usually call the historical sentences.
is the magistrate Manuel Marchena, president of the Second Chamber, and rapporteur of the aforementioned sentence, who dismembers what he calls the “chimera & rdquor ;, the “dream & rdquor; and the statement “ineffective & rdquor; of independence on October 10, 2017, ipso facto suspended for negotiations. And he finishes off the job with six memorable lines: “A decision by the Constitutional Court was enough to deprive the legal instruments that were intended to be enforced by the defendants of immediate enforceability. And the conspiracy was definitively aborted with the mere prohibition of a few pages of the ‘Official State Gazette’ that published the application of article 155 of the Constitution to the Autonomous Community of Catalonia (page 269 of the sentence) & rdquor ;.
Because if the facts had not been as described and, instead, the insurrection that the real instructor of the cause of the 1-0 through his reports, that is, the lieutenant colonel of the civil guard Daniel Baena, tacitly, maintained With the support of the Supreme Court prosecutors, wouldn’t Rajoy have applied the State of siege – a formula that the Constitutional Court, it must be said, considered, a posteriori, once the pandemic was over, appropriate instead of a State of alarm – or passed the National Security law?
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It does not seem that Felipe VI, given the patent violation of the Constitution -to continue with the parallelism- that the blocking of the CGPJ and to the appointment of the magistrates of the TC, is ready to add fuel to the fire through an exhortation, as when he clenched his fists when saying: “Our democratic principles are strong, they are solid & rdquor ;.
Are they for real?