That the Spanish Transition is falling apart is, by now, beyond any discussion. It entered the mode of total destruction when Juan Carlos I fled to the United Arab Emirates, after several corruption cases emerged and his extra-marital relationship and subsequent falling out with princess Corinna jumped from the back rooms of Madrid to the television reality shows, and now, to an eight-episode podcast, entitled Corinna and the King, in which she explains, among other things, that the-then head of state arrived from his trips abroad with bags full of money.
This scene of amassing money hand over fist is a part of what had been praised as the exemplary Spanish Transition. Today we know that its main actors were anything but exemplary. Also, that the official versions of key episodes of the story are far from what has come to light years later. In particular, with regard to two of them we begin to have all the pieces of the puzzle that showed up the the entire farce. In the 23-F attempted coup of 1981, it was not the king who rescued democracy from a bloodless military action, but rather it was he who activated the coup generals and colonels against the political power and the government democratic. In case any doubt remained, the HBO documentary series Salvar al rey (Saving the king), three ex-Spanish intelligents agents place the fugitive monarch at the centre of the coup.
The second case is that of the GAL death squads and the Spanish state's dirty war to end terrorism. Just as 'M. Rajoy' is Mariano Rajoy and there is no need to beat around the bush, the 'Mister X' of the GAL is Felipe González. Spain's former PM sealed a pact of blood with the most reactionary sectors of Spanish power whose three elements were that the left would govern the modernization of Spain, Juan Carlos I would do what he wanted with total impunity and the power of the state would continue to be in the same hands as always.
But, although it is sad to have accepted this state of affairs in order not to disturb the sleeping Francoism, which has in any case stirred back to life, we have now entered a phase of impunity for the actors in which they explain to us, shamelessly, their participation in that dirty war conducted by the state. It turns the stomach to hear José Barrionuevo, Spanish interior minister between 1982 and 1988, telling El País how he ordered the release of Segundo Marey, kidnapped by the GAL. And the disgust is greater when we know that he declares it with the impunity of someone who knows that nothing will happen to him. State operations always safeguard their criminals.
You can be sure that one day we will hear a Spanish justice or interior minister, or perhaps a judge of the Supreme Court or the National Audience, explain when, how and where the repression against the Catalan independence movement was decided. And whether the 23-F also had its Catalan chapter in the meetings of general Armada in Lleida, while he was military governor there, with celebrated Socialists such as Enrique Múgica or ex-mayor Antoni Siurana. The police and judicial repression also have their Catalan chapters in certain illustrious homes in Catalonia and in visits to the palaces of power in Madrid, the Moncloa and the Zarzuela.