What is today the use of the Republic? by Javier Cercas

Javier Cercas


It demoralizes me that the leader of a leftist party like Pablo Iglesias foments fictitious problems instead of trying to solve real problems.

I'm not a monarchist. In fact, I do not know anyone with two fingers of forehead that is, especially if by monarchy you understand what was understood for centuries. But I do not believe that the republic is the solution to any of our problems, and I suspect that Pablo Iglesias does not believe it either, although he writes articles such as: What is today the use of the Monarchy? (El País, 22-11-2018), where he argues that our democracy would be better if it were a republic, with the only argument that then access to the head of the State would be "by elections and not by fecundation." On what are my suspicions based?

In the thirties, the last time that the dilemma between monarchy and republic was seriously raised in Spain, monarchy meant dictatorship and republic meant democracy. Today that does not happen, because our monarchy is democratic, that is, a monarchy based on republican principles and therefore heir in the practice of the last democracy of our country, the Second Republic: that is why the King should vindicate more often the Republican inheritance (as he did when he paid tribute to the republican fighters of La Nueve, authentic war heroes who, integrated in the Leclerc column, freed in 1944 the Paris occupied by the Nazis).

Would our democracy be better if, instead of a monarchy, it were a republic? Would it be the Norwegian, Danish, Swedish or British democracy, which are also monarchies and, at the same time, some of the best democracies in the world?

Nobody believes it, and that is why in these countries the dilemma between monarchy and republic is irrelevant. In reality, it is a false dilemma, and to pose it is equivalent to hiding the real problems of the country after an unreal problem: pure posture of cool leftism, ultimately lethal to the left. Because what Iglesias should explain is not what the monarchy is for, but what it would serve to change it for a republic (apart from to unleash a political crisis of the first order: changing the monarchy means changing the Constitution, since the monarchy is the key to vault of the 1978, and start again, falling into the spiral of ruptures that has been the worst mistake of Spanish politics in the last two centuries): to simply change the monarchy for a republic would serve to turn Spain into a country more free, more just, more egalitarian and more prosperous?

Unless we turn the republic into a magical, sentimental and deceitful solution, like the Brexit, the answer can not be yes.

The real dilemma in Spain is not a republic or monarchy, but better or worse democracy, and the quality of a democracy, today, does not depend on whether it is a monarchy or a republic. And this is known by Iglesias, whose article is otherwise full of half-truths, which are the worst lies because they have the flavor of truth. Iglesias says that, in the Transition, the heroes of the anti-Francoism felt betrayed by their leaders, who accepted the monarchy; but it does not say that some of those leaders were heroes of anti-Francoism. Iglesias says that the King's action on February 23, 1981 had lights and shadows, and it is true-especially before 23-but he does not say that the performance of the political class almost only had shadows, nor that on that day the good Spanish people locked themselves in their house to wait for someone to take the chestnuts out of the fire (and that someone was the King). Iglesias says that Juan Carlos I gained prestige on February 23, 1981 and Felipe VI lost it on October 3, 2017, and it is true, but he does not say that he almost only lost it among those who supported a Catalan government that de facto repealed the Estatut, violated the Constitution and placed Catalonia on the verge of civil strife (all this, of course, with the complicity of Iglesias himself); He did not lose it, on the other hand, among those who supported democratic legality, as supported by the Republicans of 1936.

All this knows very well Iglesias. Why then write what you write? I do not know. What I do know is that, as a left voter, I am demoralized by the fact that the leader of a left party foments fictitious problems instead of trying to solve real problems.

https://elpais.com/elpais/2019/01/03/eps/1546534127_107680.html