Madrid - First, Basque and Catalan separatist football fans
booed and whistled Spain's King Juan Carlos and the national anthem
during a national cup final.
And then, a Catalan regionalist party launched an internet game
with a map showing three Spanish regions as independent states.
To many outsiders, neither event might appear particularly
newsworthy, but in Spain, they immediately sparked doubts about the
solidity of the country's monarchy.
'The king asserts his authority against the whistles and the dirty
game,' the conservative daily El Mundo headlined an editorial quoting
a poll showing that nearly 60 per cent of Spaniards wanted the 71-
year-old monarch to rule until his death.
Thousands of Basque and Catalan football fans protested the
presence of the king and Queen Sofia at a match between Athletic
Bilbao and Barcelona last week.
Police removed banners reading: 'We are nations of Europe.
Good-bye Spain.'
The national television broadcaster TVE edited out part of the
protests, following which its sports director was sacked for
censorship.
Immediately afterwards, the large Catalan regionalist party CiU
launched a quiz on Europe on its website as part of its campaign for
the European elections.
The quiz includes a map showing three Spanish regions - Catalonia,
Galicia and the Basque region - as independent states.
Analysts associated the football protests and the map with
demonstrations that occurred in Catalonia in 2007, when separatists
burned pictures of the royal couple.
Protests targeting people embodying the Spanish state are hardly
surprising in regions with separatist movements, observers said.
The interest aroused by such incidents, however, also reflects the
somewhat precarious position of the monarchy in a country where the
king 'has to earn his throne every day,' as Juan Carlos himself has
said.
The Bourbon king acceded to the throne in 1975 by the will of
General Francisco Franco following his 1939-75 dictatorship.
Spain had previously experienced a three-year civil war and the
1931-36 Second Republic.
Juan Carlos won the respect of his subjects by thwarting a coup
attempt against Spain's young democracy in 1981, but now his role in
those events is also being questioned.
It is true that the king ordered the insurgent paramilitary police
and military officers back to barracks, author Javier Cercas argues
in a new book.
At the same time, however, Cercas sees the king as having
contributed to the unrest by manoeuvring against then prime minister
Adolfo Suarez, who had come under widespread criticism over the
country's economic problems and killings by the Basque separatist
group ETA.
Several events have raised questions about the future of
the monarchy in the recent years.
They included a scandal over a sexual caricature on Crown
Prince Felipe, criticism of the royals' alleged lack of financial
transparency and of the queen's negative comments on homosexual
marriages.
Deputy Prime Minister Maria Teresa Fernandez de la Vega dismissed
the football protests as an 'isolated incident,' describing the
monarchy as one of the country's most highly valued institutions.
In the poll by El Mundo, about 80 per cent of those interviewed
had a 'good image' of Felipe, 41, whom they saw as being fit to
reign.
The prince is seen as having increased his popularity after his
marriage five years ago to former television news anchor Letizia
Ortiz, who has helped to give him a less distant and more familiar
image.
The couple now have two small children, and like to portray
themselves as just another Spanish family, El Mundo pointed out.
USA
Your Talkback on this Story