Spanish royal baby girl postpones constitutional debate

By Sinikka Tarvainen Nov 28, 2006, 12:56 GMT

Madrid - When Spain's Crown Prince Felipe announced overnight that the baby his wife was expecting was a girl, royalty fans were not the only ones to take interest in the news.

Experts on the constitution breathed a sigh of relief, as the news allowed Spain to postpone a complicated constitutional reform establishing the equality of the sexes in the line of succession to the throne.

The baby due in May will be the second child of Felipe, 38, and Princess Letizia, 34, a former television news anchor.

The couple's first child, one-year-old Leonor, is the first in line to succeed Felipe who is to reign after his father, 68-year-old King Juan Carlos. Leonor would thus become Spain's first female head of state since 19th-century Queen Isabella II.

But what if Felipe and Letizia's second child had been a boy?

The 1978 constitution would have given him precedence over Leonor, forcing Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero's Socialist government to rush a time-taking constitutional reform which is due to make female royals equal to men following the example of liberal monarchies such as Sweden or Belgium.

Spanish royals have never announced the sex of their child before birth, but Felipe decided to make an exception when talking to journalists at an overnight reception, apparently to calm down the constitutional debate.

The news was 'good,' but would not influence the reform which would follow its due course, Justice Minister Juan Fernando Lopez Aguilar said.

There is a wide consensus to reform the constitution, but it is easier said than done.

Changing the rules governing the right of succession requires nothing less than two-thirds approval by parliament and senate, dissolution of parliament, new elections, two-thirds approval by the new parliament and senate, and, finally, a referendum.

The government fears that the referendum could become a popularity test for the monarchy, which does not traditionally have a strong position in Spain and whose current popularity is largely based on the personalities of King Juan Carlos and Queen Sofia.

The government also intends to propose constitutional changes unrelated to the monarchy, such as a reform of the senate, which are more controversial than the right of succession.

The government and royal palace have kept saying there was 'no hurry' to push ahead with the constitutional reform, a delaying tactic which would have been called into question had Letizia's child been a boy.

If a constitutional reform had been approved after a boy's birth, it is not clear whether it could have been applied to him retroactively.

In the worst case, experts say, such a situation could have later sparked a dynastic battle between Leonor and her brother, rocking the very foundations of the monarchy.