For the second time in a week, the prime minister, Pedro Sanchez, has refused to answer any questions that have to do with the flight of the king emeritus of Spain, his journey to parts unknown, the participation of the Spanish executive in organizing the escape of Juan Carlos I and the cost to the public treasury he is racking up as he travels accompanied by officials (Civil Guard officers) for his safety. Hiding behind the confidentiality of conversations with Felipe VI, at the end of the royal audience in Palma de Mallorca, he dodged the questions that were asked at a press conference and referred any information to the royal palace or the emeritus himself.
We are facing an unusual situation - the flight of a former head of state due to allegations of corruption - of which no one officially authorized wants to provide any information with the ridiculous justification that he is a free citizen, is not charged in any court case and, consequently, possesses freedom of movement. An explanation which clashes with the enormous emphasis placed on repeating again and again that he is inviolable for his actions in accordance with article 56.3 of the Spanish Constitution. And which goes in a contrary direction to the voices noting that since his abdication in 2014, he is able to be tried for all crimes committed subsequently.
He is a free citizen, but he is not a citizen anymore. And this is where Pedro Sánchez's silence has little or nothing to do with the confidentiality of his private meetings with Felipe VI. It is the complicit silence of an information blackout that seriously compromises the government. It is not the private life of the king emeritus that should be the subject of an explanation by the prime minister but the participation of the executive in his flight to a foreign country which deputy PM Pablo Iglesias described as shameful and with regard to which he publically asked Juan Carlos I to answer for his actions "in Spain and before his people."
This is what it is all about: denouncing the protective and collaborative layer of the government that covers an improper action by the emeritus, which, far from placing a barrier between the one who has fled and the remainder of the royal family, in reality makes it all look like part of the same thing.