The Return of the King

Mariano Rajoy advised Felipe VI not to make this speech on October 3, 2017. The President of the Government wanted to preserve the neutrality of His Majesty knowing how much he was loved in certain sectors of a Catalan society with which the State lacked interlocutors. It was prudent advice, but the king decided to take a risk. Don Felipe was right and it was the most important speech of his reign; President Rajoy was also right and the Crown’s relations with Catalonia exploded. Since Salvador Illa was appointed Minister of Health, he had the idea of ​​recovering the presence and complicity of Felipe VI in Catalonia. The king never stopped going there, but he was constantly insulted by the local authorities: sometimes they did not attend the events because he had been there, other times they attended but did not greet him. The same thing happened with some street demonstrations, very poorly presented. Through Jaime Alfonsín, then head of the Royal Household, and his communications director, Jordi Gutiérrez, he tried to ensure that Catalans from all artistic, media and business disciplines could get closer to the reality of what the Monarchy is today and also to the personality of the King, and that His Majesty could at the same time be in contact with Catalans with different approaches to reality and ways of thinking. Due to the discretion of the new president of the Generalitat, this part of his work and the meetings it generated received no publicity, but Don Felipe’s congratulations to IIla for his recently inaugurated presidency were no coincidence and carried with them a burden of gratitude for what he had worked for all these years. Related news standard No Puigdemont hid for hours in an apartment in Barcelona after Operation Cage was deactivated. GovernmentThe King’s will to recover Catalonia remained firm from the beginning of the process and he was not afraid of showmanship or contempt. Knowing what he was going to find, he never stopped hoping that sooner rather than later things would improve. It was a delicate time and it was difficult to trust anything or anyone. Even daily life was very difficult to manage and we were only one mismanagement away from a single isolated incident that could lead to a major catastrophe. Don Felipe remained in his place, without ever losing his form, but without ever abandoning his work. With the very impertinent rudeness of the Junts and Esquerra governments, and that of Ada Colau as mayor of Barcelona, ​​he had patience and that. delicacy The one who ends up looking like an idiot is the one who wanted to offend you. As the Catalan institutional system collapsed in its limits and clumsiness during those years, Catalan businessmen, one by one and together through their different and prestigious organizations, reacted for the first time to the independence movement by massively inviting the king to their events. And if they had not planned events, they invented them. It was the first proof of life of a bourgeoisie that had been absent for a long time, between frightened and anesthetized, wanting to light a candle to God and the devil but not knowing which was which. Javier Godó, editor-in-chief of “La Vanguardia”, and Isidro Fainé, president of the La Caixa Foundation, ordered civil society to take the terrain that Illa had traced through politics. The years have passed, the mayor of Barcelona is no longer Ada Colau, independence. The movement has lost its absolute majority in Parliament and neither Esquerra nor Junts are prepared to receive absolutely anyone. Seven summers later, Barcelona is no longer in the news for a jihadist attack or preparations for a coup against the state, but for having hosted the most important sporting event it has hosted since the 1992 Games. Mayor Collboni said last week: “The Copa América. It is time to explain to the world that Barcelona is back.” In this new festive atmosphere, with a new president of the Generalitat, a new mayor of Barcelona and also a renewed Catalan cleaning company that voted very differently in the last electoral cycle, Felipe VI is not only a stranger to Barcelona, ​​but the main ally the city has to open itself up again to the sea. Towards the sea and the world.

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