In our country, at this moment people are dying due to the pandemic, the public health system is suffering, countless families have nothing to eat and cannot pay their rent or mortgages, the future expectations of young people are very bleak and the economic and social crisis caused by COVID-19 has spread to every corner. But, instead of facing this very serious crossroads in which we find ourselves to remedy it, there are those who intend to scare it away by shouting cheers to the King and covering themselves with the flag of Spain, resorting to a kind of magical spell typical of past centuries of darkness.
What these attitudes denote is that a part of Spanish society remains too attached to the past and its privileges. They are reluctant to recognize the existence of real problems that affect large majorities and to accept that times change and, with them, the ideas and desires of the population. They deny the problems and unduly appropriate some symbols of our democracy, such as the Crown, the flag and, ultimately, even constitutionalism... But, let us not be fooled, since, with this story, the extreme right and the ultra-right only seek to cover up their electoral failure through a confrontation that, at times, acquires worrying civil war overtones.
One of the benefits of our democracy is that it allows the coexistence of monarchists and republicans, of people from the right and left. Therefore, there are no good or bad Spaniards for preferring one or another form of State, for proclaiming cheers to the King or the Republic, for being from the left or right. The good and bad Spaniards are not identified by their political ideas, but by whether or not they fulfill their civic and democratic duties, such as paying their taxes or scrupulously respecting the institutions of the State, such as Parliament, justice or the result of electoral processes as an expression of the sovereign popular will.
However, the Spanish Constitution did not fall from the sky nor is it immovable. It is a human work resulting from a great agreement between 'the two Spains' that sought to overcome the serious wounds caused by the coup d'état perpetrated in 1936, and which caused a civil war and 40 years of Franco's dictatorship. Like all human creation, the Spanish Constitution is perfectible and responds to a specific historical moment, it is improvable and must adapt to the evolution and majority demands of our society.
Although it is born with a vocation for permanence in its original wording, the Magna Carta itself provides for its modification through simple mechanisms or very qualified majorities, depending on the scope of the modification and the affected texts. So there is no need to tear our clothes if someone proposes changes, because freely expressing ideas and confronting them is part of the essence of democratic coexistence. In such situations, something more can be expected from some social sectors than to start shouting long live the King with the flag behind them, usurping the Crown, the King, the flag and the Head of State from the rest of the Spaniards.
Despite everything, the debate is not about being in favor or against shouting cheers to the King and wrapping oneself more and better in the Spanish flag, since what underlies it is an old authoritarian tic that aspires to subdue democracy and true democrats. This is alarming, as is the drift towards the extreme right of the PP leadership or the unbalanced confrontation strategy of the Madrid PP with the rest of the Spaniards. Deepening democratic coexistence today involves knowing how to lose elections, stopping resorting to the dialectic of the gasoline can, learning to exercise responsible opposition and behaving with loyalty to the institutions. With all the institutions.
Fco. Manuel Fajardo Palarea, PSOE senator for Lanzarote and La Graciosa.
