The King’s Christmas speech received this Monday the applause of the PSOE, PP and Vox, parties that influenced different aspects of the message to give it value, while the investiture partners of the President of the Government, from Sumar to Junts, through Podemos, ERC, BNG, PNV and EH Bildu criticized the words of the head of state, from which many of them said they felt excluded.
The president of the PSOE, Cristina Narbona, positively valued the message, emphasizing the role of the Constitution as “the ideal framework to conserve, preserve coexistence and guarantee the progress of Spain”, as well as the unity of Spain based on “diversity”. .
For the Popular Party, the monarch’s commitment to the constitutional task as head of State has been demonstrated “once again” and its general secretary, Cuca Gamarra, fully shared his demand for the Constitution, joining his call to respect the Magna Carta in the moment when, in his opinion, there is “a clear objective of overflowing our common rules”, in reference to the amnesty. “The King correctly pointed out that outside the Constitution there is no peaceful coexistence, there is no freedom and there is no stability. For this reason, we join that call that has been reiterated to all powers and institutions, not only to respect the Constitution, but to keep its spirit alive,” said number 2 of the PP.
Vox reacted to the speech with a message on the social network .
Sumar’s spokesperson in Congress, Marta Lois, described the speech as “disappointing”, “anchored in the past” and warned that it contains major “absences”, after ensuring that “it does not speak to the country as a whole.” Lois regretted that the King hardly spoke about social rights, equality or climate transition and urged him to “recognize the plurality and plurinationality of our country.” María Teresa Pérez, secretary of Institutional Action of Podemos, expressed herself in a similar way, saying that the head of state made a political speech “that sought forgiveness from the ultras who were recently angry with him” and that he framed it in “a “Spanishism that does not recognize the plurinationality” of Spain.
The Catalan independence movement, which this Monday paid tribute to the figure of Francesc Macià, president of the Republican Generalitat, on the 90th anniversary of his death, attacked Felipe VI when they saw in his speech the continuation of the one he gave on October 3, 2017, after the independence referendum. In this sense, the president of the Generalitat, Pere Aragonès, stressed that the message has been applauded by “the right and the extreme right”, who, in his opinion, feel “very comfortable” with the figure of the King, while that, he asserted, “the citizens of Catalonia do not feel represented by the monarchy.” “The words of October 3 still resonated,” said the president, who added that on that date “the few ties” that part of Catalonia maintained with the monarch were broken. Likewise, the general secretary of Junts, Jordi Turull, called the King’s message “irrelevant” and “contradictory,” whom he accused of fomenting discord with that speech.
EH Bildu limited itself to responding in Esteban criticized the speech, focused on “the Constitution and the unity of Spain as a single nation” and made with the “PP, PSOE and even Vox” in mind and not the Basque and Catalan nationalists.
The BNG described the speech as “anachronistic, out of date and out of political times”, which it saw as “taking a position with the most reactionary and immobile sectors of the State.”
