Spain: Is the queen entitled to her opinion?

The royal family is supposed to be seen and not heard, said Mabel Galaz in El Pais. Most Spaniards didn’t realize that we took “royal silence” for granted until last week, when an authorized biography of Queen Sofia came out to coincide with the queen’s 70th birthday. The book, The Queen, Up Close, was studded with direct quotes giving the queen’s opinion on everything from gay marriage, which she is against, to euthanasia and abortion, which she also opposes. One thing she is for is the teaching of creationism in schools. It looks like our queen “needs to take a lesson from Queen Elizabeth II of Britain,” who never makes a gaffe, mostly because she rarely says anything that was not written for her ahead of time. Then again, Sofia is the spouse of the actual monarch, and even Britain has trouble with the royal spouse: Prince Philip was recently overheard offending South America by telling reporters, “The problem with Brazil, you know, is Brazilians.”

“I agree with everything Doña Sofia said,” said Victor Garcia Rayo in Madrid’s ABC. It’s about time someone in this country stood up for conservative values. The queen “did not, as far as we know, rant or insult anyone. She did not burn flags or spit on portraits.” She merely said what she thinks. Nor are her views surprising. The queen, who was born in Athens into the Greek royal family, converted from Greek Orthodoxy to Roman Catholicism upon her marriage to King Juan Carlos. As a devout Catholic, she is naturally opposed to abortion and homosexuality. Plenty of other Catholics in Spain feel the same way.

That’s not the point, said Isaias Lafuente in Madrid’s Periodista Digital. The question is whether the queen “can express such sentiments in public without tarnishing the patina of neutrality that the institution of the monarchy must exhibit.” On balance, I think she cannot—especially when she is expressing opposition to “matters that are already law in Spain or, worse, are being considered by the Constitutional Court, such as gay marriage.” Speaking one’s mind is one of those things a royal personage simply can’t do, “like singing karaoke or going to a nude beach.”

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The government has taken the whole thing quite well, said Santiago Gonzalez in Madrid’s El Mundo. Prime Minister José Luis Zapatero could not have been more tactful. When asked what he thought of the queen’s implied criticism of his government—it was his Socialists, after all, who have pushed for gay marriage—he said only: “Spaniards can feel very proud of how the queen exercises her constitutional role.” That sounded fishy, “so I looked up the queen’s constitutional role in the constitution itself. And I found Article 58: ‘The queen may not assume any constitutional role.’” Perhaps Zapatero wasn’t being tactful at all but rather a bit sarcastic?