The French press has highlighted two things about Mario Vargas Llosa's entry into the French Academy: his magnificent speech in which he praised above all the figure of Flaubert, but also the presence among the guests of Juan Carlos de Borbón - "acclaimed by the attendance" according to Le Figaro- and the invitation that the king emeritus received from the President of the French Republic to dine by his side at the Elysee, together with the Nobel Prize winner and the writer Javier Cercas, of whom he is a captive reader.
It is not easy to explain that the person who was King of Spain for almost forty years cannot return to his stays in the Zarzuela Palace and instead the doors of the Elíseo Palace are opened for him. The difference in treatment that the person of Juan Carlos I receives is radically different in Spain and France. When, in addition, it is a country that ended the monarchy by cutting off the head of Louis XVI and has made republican values, which emanate from the French Revolution, the pillars of its democracy. And put to make comparisons, in the same period of time the Spanish monarchs have had to pack their bags on three occasions to always end up returning to the royal palaces.
Javier Cercas reflected on this issue with the correspondent for El País: “The name of Juan Carlos has different connotations on either side of the Pyrenees. And Laurence Debray, biographer of the emeritus, added that the last time Felipe VI invited him to lunch he had no right to take a nap and, on the other hand, Nicolas Sarkozy, convicted twice for corruption and illegal financing, has not had to go to live in the Persian Gulf and even Macron asks him for advice and sits him down for lunch at the Elysee, as happened a few days ago.
For the French, Juan Carlos de Borbón is a key figure of the 20th century and his financial scandals or sentimental infidelities are considered little less than an internal matter. The overprotection of the Crown in Spain and the distance that Felipe VI has marked with his father show the difficulties of the institution to consolidate. But they can often get in the way of telling the story of the Crown itself as a meeting place.
