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Was pretty surprised when i heard.

His son is relatively squeeky clean. About the only member of the family who is! Daughter and son in law definitely won't be in the pics in the next few weeks.

I don't know how much republican pressure there is, or will be here. Gonna be interesting to see. Royal family have definitely fallen in popularity in the past few years.
 
ViolentPanda said:
You just know that Chas is saying "see, mama, it's perfectly acceptable for one's parent to abdicate in favour of one!". :D
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I think Brenda is grimly hanging on just to prevent (friend of Jimmy) Charles from ever making it to the hot seat.

And to give her her due, she hated Maggie Thatcher.
 
Favelado said:
There has been a wave of republican sentiment recently. I hope for a mass demonstration in the centre of Madrid today. Let's see how things unfold.

We want the third republic!
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image215.jpg


:confused:
 
butchersapron said:
That's often trotted out. What's not highlighted quite so often was the monarchists role in bringing franco to power then their tireless work hand in hand to the open fascists of the falange and franco's far-right authoritarian dictators to sustain and legitimise the rule and to put it in such a dominating position that it would never be effectively challenged again. And that involved playing a role in then covering up then justifying the post-war murders of tens if not hundreds of thousands of people, then doing the same with the ongoing actions of the police state - the mass jailings, the continuous primitive executions by garroting, the spying on then stamping down on any forms of independent political organisation - all this administered and ran by the nice democratic monarchists (and spain was a kingdom all this time btw - there was no king, but the state was a monarchy) and the plundering of the state and its people.

And this is rarely mentioned precisely because it would undermine the myth of the democratic transition - the one where the old elites retain all their power and any hint of ideological contamination from Portugal or the rebirth of influence of the old left and anarchist groups is sidelined and outcast by our new democrats - the one where the state changes form but the content largely stays the same. The one where the elites fear of challenges to their power was sold as fear of civil war.

There's only one sane response to such democrats.
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I think that this is all very true, actually I think that the example of South Africa's transition is pretty analogous to Spain's in a lot of ways. Like in South Africa, the Spanish political caste (as they call it, I like that better than 'political class') expanded but the oligarchy remains pretty similar. In a lot of ways whether Spain is a Republic or not is a far smaller question than whether at the end of the day the likes of Emilio Botín can hold a veto over democracy.
 
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