June 18, 2014. The Senate ratifies the King’s Abdication Law with 89% of the votes. With this decision Juan Carlos I put an end to his 39-year reign. Present at the act of signing the law, which took place in the Hall of Columns of the Royal Palace of Madrid, were Doña Sofía, the future kings, Felipe and Letizia, and their daughters, Leonor and Sofía, as well as the main authorities. of the State. There was a hug between the two Kings, father and son. Juan Carlos, in a gesture full of symbolism, gave him his chair. To reach that moment, a work team was formed. Fundamental in these meetings, the princes of Asturias. This was revealed by the former head of the King’s House Rafael Spottorno in a colloquium on the ten years since the abdication of Juan Carlos I.
“We incorporated the prince and the princess into the working group,” Spottorno revealed in a meeting at the Ateneo de Madrid that was also attended by Elena Valenciano, who was deputy general secretary of the PSOE that year, and Javier Ayuso, head of Communication. of the King’s House, according to publication The confidential. Fundamental in this roadmap were Alfredo Rubalcaba, general secretary of the PSOE, and Mariano Rajoy, president of the Government.
A resignation that took place months before, in January. It was Juan Carlos himself who confessed it in his speech on June 2: “When last January I turned 76 years old, I considered the time had come to prepare the replacement in a few months to make way for someone who is in excellent conditions to ensure that stability.” . “My son, Felipe, heir to the Crown, embodies the stability, which is a hallmark of the monarchical institution,” the monarch said.
In this long process, Juan Carlos “had hesitations” and “surely had a bad time,” The Objective reports the words of the monarch’s right-hand man. Since 2012, with the crisis unleashed by the Botswana safari, Zarzuela has evaluated the pulse of public opinion regarding the public image of the sovereign. The end of Juan Carlismo began that year, on April 12, after breaking his hip in Botswana. He had to be transferred and operated on urgently. The context of economic recession in which this fall occurred caused strong controversy and marked the beginning of its decline. His Zarzuela team studied what his first public appearance would be like and it was decided that he would say those words of forgiveness: “I’m very sorry. I was wrong. It won’t happen again”.
From that point until his abdication, “his political sense of smell” was very important, Spottorno noted. “It could have been done before, but not after. That was the political moment,” he says. With the absolute majority that the PP enjoyed in Congress they could have carried out the Abdication Law, but at all times the PSOE was counted on. “From the beginning we understood that the collaboration of the PSOE was essential.”
The very small team that worked on the abdication process came to fear that there would be some leak to the media before the day chosen to make public the monarch’s replacement: June 2, 2014. Spottorno has highlighted that Mrs. Sofía was not present in this process. She lost her status as her Queen, “without being asked by anyone,” El Confidencial publishes.
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