The news was as brief – and painful – as the facts: Juan Carlos I only stayed a few hours in Spain because "he cannot sleep in the palace of the Zarzuela". As far as we know, there is no government order or administrative or judicial resolution that prohibits him from spending the night in the house where he lived for half a century, but his stays in the palace are limited to lunch or dinner on very justified occasions. To sleep there would be to pollute it. It would be to violate the headquarters of the State.
We are therefore faced with a family decision with a justification that, if it exists, seems obvious: the current king, Felipe VI, wants to show the public the difference between the two reigns. He wants there to be nothing more than the emotional, blood and family connection that no child can avoid. He wants to save the monarchy by making the old monarch suffer a true sentence of exile, hard and exemplary.
Aside from these considerations, I want to focus on "the anatomy of an instant": the moment in which Felipe VI invites Juan Carlos I to celebrate the oath of the Constitution with his family for his granddaughter, the princess of ' Asturias, but warns him that, once he has toasted her, he will have to return to Abu Dhabi.
It must have been a moment of extreme harshness, in which Felipe VI assumed the bitter mission of being the only executor of a sentence that is not judicial. He knows that John Charles I was the great actor in the transition to democracy and he knows that without him we would not live in the parliamentary monarchy that allows him to occupy the throne; but he must have a strong heart and I wouldn't be surprised if he provoked the tears of his parent - and hers -, that kings also cry.
And the big message: this episode says a lot, says it all, about the righteousness of King Philip. It says a lot, if not everything, about the institutional discipline of the father, to whom no one has heard any complaints. And I fear that it anticipates a design for the future: when Joan Charles I expresses the desire - even the intention - to return to live in Spain, they feel like sending him the notice that Dante put on the door of the 'hell: "Forget all hope". Whoever was king of Spain has nowhere to reside in his country, because I suppose no one imagines him in a hotel or a rented house, and the old home can no longer accommodate him.
