While King Juan Carlos is already traveling to Zarzuela to meet with Felipe VI, before returning to Abu Dhabi, the Government has lamented the opportunity lost by the emeritus to give explanations and "ask forgiveness" from the Spanish, before the tax irregularities that the Prosecutor's Office proved about his fortune abroad. This has been underlined by the spokesperson for the Executive, Isabel Rodríguez: "In these days of visit, King Juan Carlos has lost an opportunity that the Spaniards expected to give explanations and ask for forgiveness", the minister reproached, during an interview on RNE .
"Without a doubt, he has lost the opportunity that Spanish society deserves, but also democracy," Rodríguez insisted on the emeritus. “I should have taken advantage of this visit, this presence in our country, having done it with that public dimension of publicity, to give an account of those actions that we have known during this time and that are not compatible with the exemplary nature and transparency that is required of an institution like the Casa del Rey”, the spokeswoman for the Executive has reproached.
Isabel Rodríguez has insisted on unmarking the figure of Felipe VI, and the very institution of the Crown, from that of the previous head of state. "Fortunately, today King Felipe VI is making a formidable exercise to recover that essence that must prevail in a State institution, which is transparency and exemplary", he highlighted, together with the support of the Government, which has recently approved a decree so that the Casa del Rey submits, like the rest of the public administrations, to the controls of the Court of Auditors, to accountability and "to the exemplary role that the Spanish and also democracy deserve".
Rodríguez, however, has insisted on circumscribing Juan Carlos's first return to Spain to the "private sphere", after almost two years residing in Abu Dhabi while his alleged tax irregularities were being investigated, and his reunion with Felipe VI in the Zarzuela. And he has also circumscribed the institutional relations of the Government to the current head of state. “King Felipe VI is doing everything he has to do, and the one who is not doing it is the king emeritus”, he has warned, in terms of advancing in the transparency and exemplary nature of the monarchical institution.
The spokeswoman for the Executive, however, did not want to point to the damage that Juan Carlos's attitude on this trip would have caused to the figure of Felipe VI himself. “It damages, without a doubt, the image of King Juan Carlos. For this reason, I think that he has lost that opportunity to give explanations to the Spaniards who valued his work at the head of the Casa del Rey during complicated times of transition to democracy in our country”, she highlighted. "They are Spaniards who believed in him and have been disappointed by the unethical and exemplary acts that have been demonstrated during this time, and for which he should have apologized," Isabel Rodríguez reiterated. "He has lost an opportunity to give the response that the Spanish expect and that he deserves Spanish democracy," she criticized.
The also Minister of Territorial Policy has also criticized the public display that this trip by Juan Carlos to Spain has entailed, recalling that the emeritus himself promised in a letter to Felipe VI to keep his returns to our country, once the Spanish and Swiss justice archived the investigations in this regard. “What he wrote would be what he should be doing right now. King Juan Carlos could have been much more careful on this first visit to our country”, she settled. And she has acknowledged that the Government is not aware of who has paid for the emeritus's plane trips from Abu Dhabi to Vigo, last Thursday, and back to the Emirates with a stopover in Madrid today. It was up to Juan Carlos himself to make known who has borne the costs. “It is a private circumstance and, therefore, those explanations depend only on him,” she has alleged.
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