Article published by José Alberto León Alonso in Diario de Avisos on 06/08/14.
The decision of King Juan Carlos I to abdicate the throne in favor of his son reopens the debate in our country on the form of government: Monarchy or Republic? I think we have more serious problems to debate but, as often happens, one reads and listens to so much demagoguery that I cannot help but contribute my opinion.
First. Changing from one system to another would neither improve nor worsen the lives of the vast majority of Spaniards. The crisis would remain the same, and so would corruption and unemployment. The political system would be just as democratic and our politicians as incompetent as now. During the transition we would suffer uncertainties and instabilities, which could harm us, but if the process were conducted within the established norms (constitutional reform and subsequent referendum), there would be no reason for alarm. Legal security would be guaranteed and the economy would continue its course. Naturally, another thing would be a revolutionary process like the one that some political parties propose: breaking the rules and calling a referendum before modifying the Constitution, whereby the current regulations would contradict a hypothetical popular support for the Republic. In a country that ignores its fundamental rule, no one would be safe and investors would flee in a stampede as we become another banana republic, like Venezuela, where the laws are dictated in the heat of a television program. Another thing is that Venezuela is precisely the model to follow. If we want to live waiting to get oil, milk, bread or toilet paper before they disappear from the shelves, this is the way.
Second. Any democrat dislikes, as a principle, the dynastic concept. For those of us who believe in meritocracy and democracy, the fact that one is more important than the others by birth bothers us. Monarchy is an anachronism, but it is not the only case of birthright advantage either. After all, those who are born rich always have an easier time accessing better education, better contacts and jobs than others, and making a clean slate between generations is unnatural for most human beings, who do everything possible to bequeath to their descendants the result of their efforts throughout life.
Third. A republican regime does not have to be more expensive or cheaper than a parliamentary monarchy. There are very modest royal houses and big-headed presidents of the republic. The Presidency of the Italian Republic, a purely nominal position, has a budget of 228 million, while the German one receives only 31 million euros annually. The cost of European monarchies varies between 39 million euros in the Netherlands and 8 million euros in Spain. They seem quite economical, although transparency is usually conspicuous by its absence and there are protocol, personnel and diplomatic items included in other sections, so the comparison is complicated. Some attribute to our Royal House a real expenditure of 25 or 50 million euros annually, but even in the worst case, the Crown's budget is no greater than a rounding error in the public accounts. If public spending in Spain amounts to around 460,000 million euros annually, the cost of the Crown for the Public Treasury ranges between 0.0017% and 0.01% of the total, and nothing would force the institutional cost of a Republic to be lower. The conclusion is that, assuming equality of functions, the costs of a monarchy or a republic are equal, so the economic cost cannot be considered an argument for or against either system.
Room. The rights and freedoms of citizens are independent of whether a regime is monarchical or republican. Monarchy and republic have alternated throughout time and within them both pure forms of government and various tyrannies have been able to develop. After all, fascism and communism are republican, albeit totalitarian, regimes, just as absolute monarchies were.
So we are not going to live better or worse with one form of government or another, so the debate is not really practical but doctrinaire. It is about the fact that “no decision is democratic if it is not submitted to a referendum” or that “we do not vote for this Constitution.” Responding to the second is childish: neither is any republican constitution subjected to a referendum periodically. On the contrary, among the essential purposes of any constitution, monarchical or republican, is precisely that of permanence: to be a framework broad enough to be able to guarantee a lasting space of coexistence with permanent rights and freedoms, in which different ideologies coexist and in which governments can alternate without having to change that framework in each alternation. Voting on the Constitution periodically is neither beneficial nor necessary. If something is not liked, the elections are won and it is modified according to the established procedure. Regarding the first, it is the old dilemma between direct or representative democracy. There is no space for that debate, but it is curious that those who defend direct democracy as the only democratic legitimacy, have as a long-awaited model or reference the Second Republic whose Constitution, curiously, was never voted or endorsed by the Spanish, as was its form of state.
In Spain we have a Head of State who doesn't really matter, something that is good, but who reigns due to a genetic accident, something that is not entirely fair. It is not the best of all worlds, but it is an agreement that seems to work correctly in the majority of European countries, which have more experience in democracy than us. And the fact that it is threatened by populists, Bolivarians, anarchists, separatists, fascists, neo-communists and radicals of all kinds, all of them lovers of stability, understanding and progress, leads me to think that there must be something good about it. Could it be that in a country as partisan and cainite as ours, the existence of a neutral, non-partisan institution with a long-term spirit of permanence stabilizes and resolves tensions without the need for revolutions, and that leaves them without a “job.” And frankly, I would rather prefer a hereditary position away from the partisan fight than a new position to incorporate into the distribution and baking of our political mangants. For all practical purposes, the royal family is an experienced group of diplomats with long-standing contacts with the Heads of State of the world's non-democratic countries, who are, after all, the majority. As a diplomatic instrument, it is much more useful than a president of the ceremonial republic who changes from time to time, and thus the impact on the image and external projection of our royal family (and the British one), is much greater than that of the name of the current president of Germany, who no one knows. On the other hand, a democracy is a balance that must satisfy everyone, and modifying the state model requires an enormous expenditure of energy and political effort, and all for a doctrinal issue. According to the CIS, the Monarchy is a cause of concern for only 0.2% of Spaniards. If the position of Head of State is symbolic, has no political power or additional economic cost, and no one cares, what difference does it make whether the position is occupied or not by an elected person, as long as he satisfactorily fulfills his function? We have too many real problems to solve to waste time and energy on symbolic problems.
