MOSCOW, June 3 (RIA Novosti) – The abdication of King Juan Carlos I and the upcoming accession of his son, Crown Prince Felipe, has ended a controversial era in the Spanish history that saw the monarchy’s popularity surge to an unprecedented high before dwindling dramatically after a series of corruption scandals.
Over the past forty years of King Carlos’s reign, which began after the death of military dictator Franco in 1975, Spain became a parliamentary monarchy, a full member of the European Union and one of the region’s leading economies.
Many Spaniards believe these achievements are directly linked to the personality of King Juan Carlos, but the 2008 financial crisis and a string of corruption cases involving several members of the Royal Family has taken its toll on his reputation.
TARDY ABDICATION
King Juan Carlos, formerly Europe’s most popular monarch, abdicated at a time when the monarchy’s approval rating in Spain dropped to its historical low.
Many of his subjects wondered why he didn’t choose to step down at the height of his popularity, with experts claiming the decision was postponed due to Spain’s dire economic situation.
“This decision was made a few years ago, but it was put off several times. Over the last two years, the preparations were particularly intensive,” said Diego Hidalgo, founder of FRIDE and the Clubde Madrid, in a comment to RIA Novosti.
Hidalgo said that the moment for the king to give way to his son came after Spaniards stopped living in the past and started looking ahead. “The age balance in the society changed, there is now a new generation of Spaniards who never knew dictatorship, and this fact called for a generational change,” the pundit said.
He added Crown Prince Felipe, who is to succeed his father as King Felipe VI, has received enough monarchic training to play his role well. The prince is expected to inherit an institution tarnished by scandals.
MONARCHY PLUS DEMOCRACY
When the king-to-be was only nine, dictator General Franco ordered a referendum on the form of governance in Spain where almost 14 million voted in favor of a monarchy, with only 700,000 voting against. A 1947 law proclaiming the country a monarchy was signed promptly after the vote.
The following year the dictator and the future kind met aboard Franco’s yacht Azor. The general offered his father to send the boy to Madrid and appointed him his official successor in 1969. Juan Carlos ascended to the throne after Franco’s death.
The king won the hearts of his subjects with his humble character. He seemed to be devoid of the traits that the royalties usually had, including haughtiness and intolerance. Many were surprised at how little he valued the traditional lavish lifestyle of Spanish nobility.
The Spanish constitution does not have a special law regulating the role of the monarchy, so for many Spaniards their king came to personify the idea of power outside the spectrum of the usual political mess. In a nutshell, the king grew to become the face of the Spanish democracy.
SCANDALS
The 2008 crisis in Spain weighed heavily on the monarchy’s popularity, with corruption charges against his sister and her husband sending its ratings into freefall.
In 2011, the husband of Infanta Cristina, businessman and ex-football star Inaki Urdangarin, became entangled in a corruption scandal and was ousted by the Royal family, but the criminal case smeared its reputation.
The next year, Carlos’s youngest daughter was in her turn accused of bribery, but charges didn’t hold and the case fell apart due to the lack of evidence. The year 2014 saw a member of a royal dynasty appear in court for the first time in history when Cristina was questioned for several hours by a court in Majorca.
The string of charges and lawsuits brought the Spanish monarchy’s rating down to 3.72 points on a ten-point scale.
