The Diplomat
No political party was indifferent to the traditional Christmas message delivered by King Felipe VI on Christmas Eve. While the two major parties -PP and PSOE- and Vox supported the speech, Sumar and the nationalist parties criticised the monarch.
The president of the PSOE, Cristina Narbona, said that the Socialists share the Head of State’s “concern” for the main problems affecting Spaniards, including the considerations he made about the Constitution “as the ideal framework for preserving and conserving coexistence”. The King’s speech was, according to the Socialists, a practically full endorsement of the Executive’s policies.
The president of the PP, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, showed his full support for the King’s words and affirmed that “outside of respect for the Constitution and the institutions, there is no law but arbitrariness”.
The two Catalan secessionist parties, Junts and ERC, radically opposed in a competition to demonstrate to the pro-independence electorate which of the two is the one that tears the state to pieces the most, have coincided in their resounding criticism of the words of Felipe VI.
For the President of the Generalitat, Pere Aragonès, the speech was designed to satisfy “the right and the extreme right”. In his opinion, “the citizens of Catalonia do not feel represented by the monarchy”.
The secretary general of Junts, Jordi Turull, considered the King’s message as a second part of the one addressed to the nation in October 2017, at the height of the secessionist attempt. According to Turull, the King’s words this year have been “irrelevant” and “contradictory” because they “foment discord”.
The PNV spokesman in Congress, Aitor Esteban, regretted the references to Spain “as the only nation” and added that “it is a speech that is not made for us, but for the PP, PSOE and Vox”.
In a message on the social network X, which was retweeted by its president Santiago Abascal, Vox limited itself to echoing the antepenultimate paragraph of Felipe VI’s speech in its entirety, without adding any comment: “Spain will move forward”, aware of its historical reality as a nation.
Sumar’s spokesperson in the Congress of Deputies, Marta Lois, considered the speech to be “disappointing” because, in her opinion, Felipe VI did not focus “on social rights and everyday life”, nor did he refer to the “plurinationality” that her party defends.
The secretary general of Podemos, Ione Belarra, criticised the fact that King Felipe made no mention of the “genocide in Palestine”. According to Belarra, the King made “desperate attempts to gain the sympathy of the right”.
No EH Bildu spokesperson assessed the speech because, according to them, “the Spanish Monarchy imposes this intervention on the Basque public media”. In the days leading up to Christmas Eve, EH Bildu invited people to “boycott” Felipe VI’s Christmas message by “turning off the radio and television stations” that broadcast it.
