How does a king who has gone astray apologize to his people? With a contrite expression on the television news and an ostentatious show of humility. "I'm sorry. I was wrong and it won't happen again," the 74-year-old Juan Carlos assured Spaniards in a brief televised statement last Wednesday, looking like a boy whose mother had just caught him committing a prank.
"An unprecedented gesture," a columnist with the Madrid daily El País called the royal words. The people had learned that the king had been hunting elephants in Botswana, because he had broken his hip at night and had to be flown home for surgery. As Spanish citizens learned from the papers, he had reportedly been the guest of a Saudi Arabian magnate, and was accompanied by a German woman, a member of the aristocracy who is said to be very close to him.
The photos of the big game hunter on cover pages, holding his gun as he stood in front of a gray corpse and an ivory hunting trophy, even annoyed Spain's royalists. He was on a luxury safari (at an estimated cost of more than €40,000, or $52,000) at precisely a time when the financial markets are demanding higher and higher risk premiums on Spanish government bonds. It's also a time at which conservative Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy feels compelled to beef up his €27 billion austerity package with another €10 billion in budget cuts to education and healthcare. To make matters worse, the Spanish oil company Repsol is effectively being expropriated in Argentina. In other words, while their head of state was enjoying himself in Africa, his subjects were experiencing one of the worst weeks of the year.
The king's apology represents a sea change. Shouldn't such a weak man have to abdicate? How will the monarchy continue? These are questions that are being discussed in blogs and on talk shows, while newspaper columnists are publicly debating an institution that was considered sacrosanct until recently. » | Helene Zuber | Monday, April 23, 2012
