Many years ago, when Doña Sofía, her grandmother, traveled through the territories of Spain, even with Franco on the throne that he won with a war, it was rare for that lady who would later be consort of King Juan Carlos to say something that was not dedicated to which was then required by the Women’s Section. The world has changed and Spain has changed a lot. What’s more, Spain is changing a lot, and that change is being added at this moment, and it will be added in a more significant way when it has to be effective queen, Princess Leonor, who since On the morning of this Tuesday, October 31, she is the heir to the throne of which his father now owns.
His father made his first speech when he was a boy of the age that the future queen is now. It was after a monumental disaster that Spain successfully overcame, and with the decisive intervention of Don Felipe’s father’s father. In that act, protected by the unique national intelligence that is the Principality of Asturias Foundation and its annual awards, Don Felipe inaugurated his proximity to the throne by listening to the words of a great poet, José Hierro, who had spent prison and persecution by the victors of the war and, in democracy, he addressed the Prince of Asturias. He did it from the painful experience of having lived in a broken country whose future could have been different if that military coup (“military, of course”) had won on February 23.
That moment gives a chill, remembering it, imagining it, because even today it seems unbelievable that those heirs of Francoism were capable of deciding that this country had to change gears so that “not even the mother who gave birth to him would get to know him”.
Those were days of sweat, although there were no tears but stupor. That stupor, verified in the empty streets of the night, in the excitement of the morning, in the meetings that the king later had with those who had been threatened by those who followed Tejero, it was real, tangible. It was not bravado from newspapers or benches: Spain could have gone to hell. And from then on there was a different Spain, oblivious to the skirmishes that then put it in danger, and willing to respect itself by ensuring that all political ideas were respected.
The extreme right that wanted to take power, the left (which at that time was, above all, the left of Santiago Carrillo), took note of the horrible spectacle of those deputies under the seats, or locked up and watched by recent soldiers and veteran soldiers. , and Spain returned to prospecting for its future.
It hasn’t gone bad for us. Some things, alas, go very wrong, and that is the nature of life: that things get worse or better, and it is a human and political issue to ensure that when something goes wrong, we try to fix it without completely breaking the mechanism. The future queen, Dona Leonorwho has sensible and cultured parents, educated in a solvent democracy, in a more diverse, and more difficult world, but both made, Doña Letizia and Don Felipe, or Don Felipe and Doña Letizia, in a different country and in a very different worldin which even artificial intelligence is scary.
She, the future queen, faces a country whose contemporaries aspire, like her, to a better place in the universe to which they access as adults.
They are protected, they, we, the citizens, for a democracy that is not in danger (it is not in danger) despite the fact that on the corners of the demonstrations there are sayings that announce their end. She, the future queen, the one who has taken charge of his tremendous responsibility, which he must assume when the Constitution demands itfaces a country whose contemporaries aspire, like her, to a better place in the universe to which they access as adults.
Very recently, under the watchful eyes of her mother and sister, she exchanged roles with her father. Doña Leonor assumed that she is already the one who speaks in the most important of the cultural issues that unite her country with the world, the Princess of Asturias awards, and her father explained the international reach that this initiative that the heiress now presides over has. for a different Spain, for example, than the one Pepe Hierro was talking about, still shivering in this country. That good Cantabrian who wrote some verses that are unforgettable and that were, also, songs of life and hope in those moments when, still, what remained most in the chilled eardrums of the Spaniards was that order: “Quiet everyone!”
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Now The future is being written at the same time that Europe and the world are writing itand Spain, the Spain of the future, is catching up in the midst of dark clouds that are not only ours, but come from the unstoppable course of life, which does not always (as happened to us on 23F) depend on the common sense with which The future claims its place in history.
The future queen has the future that belongs to her generation and to those of us who are behind in time. She has very serious examples to follow. Stefan Zweig said, about Brazil, that this was the country of the future, “and always will be.” Now it has been written a decisive line of the Spanish future. The queen who will assume it is already prepared, as an adult, to know the deep meaning that the verses of that poem by José Hierro had then, and have now. The future is moving, although those who shout against it, in reality, against themselves.