Free pass fades for Spanish royal family

MADRID - For more than three decades, King Juan Carlos of Spain has enjoyed the unquestioning loyalty of his subjects and the discreet respect of the media. But the era of deference during which the royal family's jet-set lifestyle and personal affairs were free of public scrutiny could be drawing to a close.

A series of protests by Catalan nationalists and calls from a conservative commentator for the king to abdicate have broken a longstanding taboo and prompted debate about the role of the monarchy and the privileges and uncommon reverence enjoyed by the royal family.

Juan Carlos took the unprecedented step last week of defending the constitutional monarchy, saying it had helped guarantee "the longest period of stability and prosperity that Spain has ever experienced under democratic rule."

The king's role in helping restore democracy in Spain after the dictatorship of Franco won him the enduring gratitude and respect of a majority of Spaniards.

Born in Rome in 1938, the king returned to Spain at age 10, where he studied and was groomed as the successor to Franco. He was proclaimed king in 1975, after Franco's death, but steered the country toward a parliamentary system and now has little actual power.

During an attempted military coup in February 1981, the king went on television to denounce the putsch and urged the Spanish people to support the democratically elected government.

"He played an incredibly courageous role in the transition," said Paul Preston, a professor of history at the London School of Economics and the author of several books on Spain. "He won the right to be king."

The royal family remains popular among Spaniards, who in May voted King Juan Carlos the greatest Spaniard of all time, beating out Christopher Columbus and Miguel de Cervantes, the author of "Don Quixote." But the affection for the king himself does not extend to the institution of the monarchy and many refer to themselves as juancarlistas rather than monarchists.

The media have stepped gingerly around the royal family, eschewing gossip and limiting themselves to tame photos of the king and queen during their official journeys, and their infant grandchildren in lacy white outfits.

While Spaniards gobble up countless magazines filled with compromising pictures of minor royalty and celebrities, magazine editors claim they have no interest in seeing vulgar images of their own royal family.

Then in June, the satirical magazine El Jueves published a cartoon on its cover that featured Juan Carlos's son, Crown Prince Felipe, and his wife, Princess Letizia, having sex. A judge's decision to recall the magazine and try the cartoonists sparked a frenzy of interest in the little-read publication and furious debate about freedom of speech. Those who damage the monarchy's image face up to two years in prison under Spanish law.

"The way we handle our monarchy is very antiquated and repression has a counterproductive effect," said Fernando Bouza, a specialist in public opinion at the Complutense University of Madrid.

The cartoon incident was followed by a rash of small rallies by leftist protestors who support the independence of Catalonia and see the king as a symbol of an oppressive, centralized Spain. In recent weeks, demonstrators have burned placards bearing the king's image and shouted slogans like, "The Catalans have no king."

In a mock lynching last week, two hooded men hung a mannequin wearing a crown from the roof of the Autonomous University of Barcelona, according to local news reports.

Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya, a leftist Catalan party, has lobbied to force the royal household to reveal details of its finances, and in July the household appointed an internal auditor to scrutinize its accounts.

Miguel Angel Moratinos, the foreign minister, dismissed the protests last week as the "antics of a radical fringe," saying that the king was "a strong figure valued by the vast majority of Spaniards."

The attacks have not come solely from the left. Last month, Federico Jimenez Losantos, an outspoken conservative radio commentator, called on Juan Carlos to abdicate in favor of his son, Felipe, to allow the regeneration of the monarchy.

To some extent the controversy mirrors a broader debate about the relevance of monarchy in Europe, as members of the younger generation marry nonroyals with checkered pasts, and taxpayers question the expense of maintaining their monarchs' lifestyles.

Commentators from both sides of the political spectrum said the king may have become a victim of the very role for which he is so widely revered: his close association with the transition to democracy, a kind of forgive-and-forget process that enabled the country to move on from its terrible 1936 to 1939 civil war and the decades of dictatorship that followed.

In recent years, interest in the transition, and the silence many say accompanied it, has risen and many, particularly on the left, are questioning how successfully or fairly it dealt with Spain's bloody past.

Conservative politicians and commentators say the king is the latest victim of a campaign by the government of Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero to erode the value of Spain's institutions: the Catholic Church, marriage, the monarchy.

"The king is the personification of the transition," Herman Tersch, a conservative newspaper columnist, said in a telephone interview. "These attacks are a disgrace, but a logical one if you consider that all of our institutions have been burned by this government."