Mad Rant: The News from Spain

In case anyone hasn’t heard, HM the King of Spain broke his hip (actually you may not have heard about that part) while on a hunting trip in Africa. I was horrified when I first heard the news. As regular readers will recall my own father broke his hip last September (due to an altercation with a bull). Especially for people of a certain age, a fractured hip is extremely serious. All too often it is the beginning of the end. However, regular readers are also well aware that, according to numerous medical professionals, I’m not entirely of sound mind. I must be nuts because, silly me, here I was thinking that the elderly monarch breaking his hip would be the focus of all the news coverage and evoke an outpouring of sympathy from his people. No, evidently I missed the real story which was that the King had an accident (gasp) WHILE HUNTING! Saints and angels in Heaven, I have never in my life been more flabbergasted at the outpouring of vitriol toward a man who could possibly have been killed -because he was hunting! Seriously, the next day I read through article after article desperately trying to find something else I had been missing that would explain this over-emotional collective hissy-fit on the part of people, not only in Spain, but including royal watchers around the world.

Aha! Some will be quick to point out that the word is that he was hunting elephants and elephants are endangered and cannot be hunted. In the first place, that has not been confirmed. So far, it is a rumor and nothing more. In the second place (and you might want to sit down for this) -I don’t give a damn if he WAS hunting elephants. The man (forget King, a living, self-aware person with a soul, a family, children and grandchildren) might have died. I’m deranged, I’m a crazy person -I consider a person more valuable than an elephant. Sorry if that offends you. No, actually I can’t say that, I really don’t care if it offends anyone or not. I just cannot believe the outpouring of hatred over something so trivial, I cannot believe that a 74-year old man breaks his hip -and everyone is upset at HIM! And I’m not exaggerating, I wish I were. For the first time ever, the King issued a public apology (you know, after he got out the hospital for emergency surgery) for taking such a vacation at a time when the country is having an economic crisis. “I’m very sorry, I made a mistake. It won’t happen again,” the King said. The leader of the socialist party has actually called for abdication and the Spanish media, traditionally respectful toward the monarchy, has been lambasting the injured King as well.

I could just scream! The socialists are calling for King Juan Carlos to abdicate over a hunting trip. Seriously. The socialists. The socialists who are only able to exist openly and be in politics at all because this same King said that the people should be able to choose any political party they wished to participate in government. The media is attacking King Juan Carlos. Seriously. The media. The same media that was firmly muzzled before this same King Juan Carlos restored freedom of the press along with everything else after the death of Generalissimo Franco. Because he might have shot an elephant. Really…I…the words just escape me. Was it the hunting? Was it that money was being spent during hard times in Spain? I DON’T GET IT! No one really knows what the King was hunting, no one even knows if he actually killed so much as a fly and we DO know that he was a guest and no Spanish public funds were spent on the trip at all. I don’t see how this could possibly make LESS sense to me! Was Spain just overdue for a hyper-emotional freak out and this just happened to be the only available excuse to let it all out?

My heart breaks over this stuff, it really does. Once again I find myself asking, “what on earth has happened to Spain?” I want to go over to Portugal, stand at the border and ask that other country, “Who are you and what have you done with the real Spain?!” Tear down the monarchy over a hunting trip? Campaigns against bullfighting? Giving in to terrorist attacks? My God in Heaven, how can this be the same country that produced the conquistadors? How did the people who forged the first empire upon which it was said, “the sun never set”, whose saints inspired people on every continent, whose tercios made countries tremble somehow produce these over-emotional, hyper-sensitive, bleeding heart crowds I see before me today? How is it that the same country that invented “macho” is freaking out so much over a hunting trip? Has all Spain gone vegetarian and I missed it? I mean, where do they think meat comes from? I can’t help but wonder after seeing so many royal watchers go into hysterics over the idea of someone killing animals. How do you think they get on your plate? Think they commit suicide or roll over and play dead?

I’m really at a loss to explain it. How almost a whole country can change so drastically in such a short period of time. And I’ll say something else. I would be willing to bet that back in the days when the Spanish Inquisition was still going strong, conquistadors roamed the frontiers of the world and there was a bullring in every Spanish town, there were probably more Spaniards doing more actual good for more needy people around the world than today. All they do today is gripe on the internet, send angry emails to TV stations and sign on-line petitions. Yeah, that’ll save all the precious animals from the horrors of humanity and the food chain. How about next you fly down to that same part of Botswana and find a poor farmer who just had his entire crop for the year trampled to nothing by elephants that you signed an on-line petition to save the precious animals that might be the cause for his children dropping dead from malnutrition. Because animals are more important than people after all. Right? Is that the normal mentality these days? I don’t know if the King learned anything from this bewildering episode (bewildering to me anyway, I can only imagine what His Majesty thinks of it all) but the only lesson I see is that no good deed goes unpunished and that some people just feel compelled to bite the hand that freed them. If the King made one mistake in his life it was when he decided that the Spanish people should make their own decisions.

This…really, I just can’t put it into words. I’d eat an elephant burger right now if I could. So there. My thoughts and prayers are with His Majesty the King and his family, I hope he recovers well and quickly. I hope he makes it through this emotional outburst by his people unscathed. Oh, and any world leaders contemplating giving their people freedom and democracy might want to consider how they might one day be rewarded for such a gift. That’s all, I am The Mad Monarchist … Viva el Rey!