The smokescreen of 23-F turns against Sánchez over the role of King Juan Carlos I

Another failure for the coalition government of socialists and communists with its increasingly blatant diversionary tactics.

The inconvenient headlines for Sánchez that coincide with his 23-F smokescreen
The Stalinist censorship of Bolaños and Pedro Sánchez against King Emeritus Juan Carlos I

One of the possible purposes of this smokescreen, according to some analysts, was an attempt to damage the Monarchy by questioning its role during the coup attempt of February 23, 1981. It's worth remembering that the government, and especially its far-left partners, have been launching attacks against the Monarchy for years. One of their clearest attacks on the Crown took place in November 2024, after Sánchez fled Paiporta in the face of the anger of residents affected by the floods, who were abandoned by the government for four days. King Felipe VI stayed, and that left Sánchez even more exposed, something that annoyed the socialists.

The declassification of documents about the 23-F coup attempt has revealed that the coup plotters pointed to King Juan Carlos I as the architect of their failure, considering that their first mistake was to "leave the Bourbon free and treat him as if he were a gentleman." Even pro-government media outlets, such as El País, are highlighting this, which reaffirms the key role of King Juan Carlos I in thwarting that coup. In fact, the declassified documents also reveal that the attempts by the far right to implicate the King in the coup, in an attempt to "diminish the criminal responsibility of those prosecuted for those acts", and also for "the possibility of having an argument against the Crown that would make a similar attempt possible in the future".

A week ago I pointed out here that Juan Carlos I played a courageous role in the face of the 23-F coup attempt, preventing Spain from reliving the terrible years of the civil war that littered our country with corpses between 1936 and 1939. The declassified documents reaffirm the role of the King Emeritus at that time and do so, moreover, a few days after the government removed Juan Carlos I from an exhibition on the Constitution, the first copy of which bears the signature of that monarch, who was the one who defended the constitutional order against the coup plotters in 1981. A role that was captured in one of the most emblematic images of the Transition: the King in his office and in military uniform confronting the coup d'état through television, a fundamental intervention to thwart that attempt to liquidate our democracy.

Furthermore, as I denounced here in 2021, the King Emeritus suffers an infamous situation of de facto exile, without having been convicted or even prosecuted for any crime, something that cannot be said of Sánchez's personal circle and political entourage. A week ago, I already pointed out that the most corrupt government in the history of democracy keeps Juan Carlos I in exile because it does not consider him an exemplary figure, as if this government were in a position to give lessons.

In the end, this smokescreen has backfired on the government itself, exposing its petty role in a radically unfair treatment of one of the most important living historical figures in our history, a man who played a fundamental role in the return of democracy to Spain and in the defense of our constitutional order against a coup that could have had a disastrous outcome for our country. What remains to be asked is that the King Emeritus return to Spain to live out his final days in his homeland, from which he was expelled by a government in the hands of two parties that lost the last general elections and that remain in power thanks to the support of, among others, parties that carried out the second coup d'état of our democracy: that of October 1, 2017 in Catalonia, a coup that Sánchez has tried to erase by granting amnesty to its perpetrators in exchange for their support for his re-election.

Furthermore, the government must now direct its sudden desire for transparency toward explaining the use of more than 100 flights of the official Falcon jets (many of them to the Dominican Republic, one of the key locations in the corruption schemes linked to the government), the cost of its tours international and his vacations (paid for by all Spaniards through their taxes), its communications during the Valencia floods in 2024 (when the government waited four long days to sending the Army to help those affected) and also the minutes of the negotiations between the PSOE and ETA from two decades ago (an infamous political negotiation by the Socialists with a terrorist group), which are some of the matters the Socialists keep secret. Or should that part of our memory be locked away, Mr. Sánchez?