Corona: not just the problems we knew about

Corona just means crown. We use the word for things that have, or seem to have, a crown. There’s a corona around the sun. There’s a corona around the particularly nasty virus we talk about so much these days. And, of course, there’s a corona on every crowned head, by very definition.

So spare a thought for poor Spain. Like England, it’s struggling with both the health and the financial impact of the virus. Its strict lockdown to protect public health worked a lot better than the weaker measures in Britain, but the damage to the economy has been painful. Though, oddly, England has damaged its economy even more seriously, while controlling the pandemic less well. But then, England has Cummings and Johnson.

Today, however, cases in Spain are increasing once more at a depressing rate, and lockdown measures are having to be reintroduced. Just as they are in England. Although in England they seem to be targeting the Midlands and the North first of all, as though the Conservatives want to punish traditional Labour areas for having the audacity to vote for them instead.

Spain has an additional element of suffering. It’s also having to cope with Corona problems of the other, more ancient variety. The ones associated with the Crown. Especially since its previous occupant, Juan Carlos I, erstwhile King and now King emeritus, decided to do a bunk, fleeing abroad to some destination that has yet to be made public.

Juan Carlos I: ex-King who did a flit, and who knows to where?

His flight was precipitated by the ongoing investigation of his financial affairs. In particular, the judicial authorities find that his bank accounts in Switzerland raise a number of questions they’d like answered (yes, the understatement is deliberate).

This is sad, because Juan Carlos was the designated successor to the dictator Franco but, instead of maintaining the dictatorship, he oversaw an orderly transition to democracy. A referendum adopted the new constitution, still in force today, less than three years after the dictator’s death.

What’s more, not three years after that, when a coup against the new regime was launched by disaffected members of the paramilitary police and the army, Juan Carlos spoke out powerfully against it, rallying the nation to the cause of legitimate government. That ensured the coup’s failure.

Guardia Civil Colonel Antonio Tejero invading Parliament

Now, I’m a bit of a cynic and I share the misgivings of many over the length of time it took the King to come out with that statement. The initial attack against the Parliament took place just before 6:30 in the evening and the King’s broadcast went out at 1:14 in the morning. He recorded it around an hour earlier, but even that was six hours after the coup was launched.

There are those who say he knew in advance that it was going to happen, and only came out firmly in opposition once it became clear not enough of the army supported it. I don’t know how true or false that is. It is interesting, however, that there are those doubts, and that even as long ago as 1981 there were therefore some suspicions clouding the admiration felt towards the King by the Spanish people.

Which may have been a harbinger of what has happened now.

Even so, there are over 600 streets and squares called after Juan Carlos I across Spain. I am, indeed, in one of them now, as I write this piece from the flat near Madrid my one-year-old granddaughter inhabits and kindly shares with her parents (and, right now, us).

Today, a number of councils are facing motions from the Left suggesting it may be time to change the names of those streets and squares.

The government, too, led by Pedro Sánchez, a Socialist but on the Right of his party, is having to fight off moves from his coalition partner, from parties on whose parliamentary support he relies, and even from Socialist colleagues, to review the legal position of the Crown in Spanish politics. It is an offence, for instance, to insult the King, though that could be changed simply by new legislation. More problematic, the King can’t be held accountable for his acts either, and to change that would require a constitutional amendment.

Not the moment, Sánchez argues.

Ah, yes. He has a lot on his plate. Spain is closing down discos and bars again as the scourge of the virus builds again. The country has a shattered economy to rebuild. And now it has the distraction of a monarchy with a former King who’s beginning to look as toxic as the virus.

It amazes me that in today’s world we still have regimes led by men entitled to deference by right of birth. That strikes me as something to fix, so I’d like to see all three questions addressed at once. And perhaps in Britain as well as Spain.

But I can see how it makes the uphill struggle that Spain already faces even steeper and longer than it already was.

So spare my adopted nation a little sympathy…

Postscript: when the military knows how to respond to a coup

On the night of the coup, 23 February 1981 (so the event is referred to as 23F), the only city that was taken over by the military was the one where we live now. Let me quickly say that the two things aren’t causally connected. It’s just that the military region of Valencia was commanded by the general who supported the coup most actively.

Things went reasonably smoothly for him, until he sent tanks out to the airport at Manises, to get the air force unit there to join in. He got a dusty reply from the colonel in charge, according to the story a minister of the time later told:

“I have a Mirage on the runway with its engines running and armed with air to ground missiles. If the tanks heading for the base don’t turn around and pull back I’ll order it to take off and attack them. And I have another Mirage fighter ready on the runway just in case.”

The tanks retreated.