Anti-monarchists in Spain are calling for rowdy protests to drown out the king’s annual Christmas speech, urging people to turn off their televisions, hit pots and pans, or blow republican tunes, while the Spanish royal family’s page on one of the most tumultuous years in recent memory.
“There will be all kinds of protests from different collectives,” José Manuel García, of the republican group Encuentro Estatal por la República, told the news site Diario Público.
His group has urged the Spaniards to turn off their TV just as the King starts his Christmas Eve speech while others are on social media have called for noise to muffle the frost.
The hope is to repeat the success of a similar protest in March, when the king’s broadcast address to the nation was met with a cacophony of noise during the lockdown.
King Felipe, who took power in 2014, has repeatedly tried this year to distance himself from an ongoing drop of damaging allegations involving his father, Juan Carlos.
In March, Felipe announced that he would part with his father’s personal legacy after it was alleged that he was about to receive millions of euros from a secret offshore fund linked to Saudi Arabia.
Months later, Spain’s Supreme Court announced an investigation into Juan Carlos’s role in a deal in which a Spanish consortium secured a € 6.7 billion contract to build a high-speed line between the Saudi cities of Medina and Mecca.
The scandal deepened in August when Juan Carlos said he was leaving Spain because of the “public repercussions that certain past events are causing in my private life”.
Confirmation that the former monarch was in the UAE did little to stop the headlines, and Juan Carlos was back in the news this month when his lawyers announced that he had paid the tax authorities nearly € 680,000 following a voluntary return from previously undisclosed income.
While Spain’s Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez, has argued that what is being judged is the person and not the institution, the myriad allegations surrounding Juan Carlos are likely to emerge when King Felipe addresses the nation.
“We are going to pay close attention to the King’s Christmas message,” Gerardo Pisarello, a politician with the left-wing Podemos party, told reporters this week.
“We believe that the minimum people expect from Felipe VI’s speech is that he condemns the irregularities attributed to the [former] king… and that he demands a thorough and complete investigation, ”he said. “To be silent and pretend nothing has happened this year would be a sign of weakness for the monarchy.”