Tesis que comparto plenamente.

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La comparto tan plenamente que llevo años intentando razonar el carácter imprescindible de tales reformas, justamente, para intentar escapar al círculo vicioso de … “esa amenazada comunidad de seres humanos unidos en la incertidumbre, condenados a cohabitar en la rama de un árbol que tiene enfermas sus raíces, quizá podridas, recuerda con ferocidad las pulsiones cainitas que se cernían sobre el Estado español a principios del siglo XXI…”

Financial Times estima que España necesita estas tres reformas institucionales:

-Reforma de un sistema de partidos ineficaz y corrupto… Corrupción y crisis institucional… frutos podridos del modelo electoral y político.

-Reforma de un sistema judicial víctima del entrismo político y sus corruptelas… Crisis saturnal del modelo judicial de España.

-Reforma constitucional de la organización territorial del Estado… Angustia social y crisis institucional en España, 2.

Financial Times, 20 / 21 junio 2014:

Spain changes the royal guard

Felipe VI, Spain’s new king, takes over as head of state at a low point in his country’s history, marked by alarming levels of unemployment, the widespread discredit of institutions including the monarchy and a looming constitutional crisis as Catalonia insists on its right to decide whether to leave the Spanish state.

Whereas his father, King Juan Carlos, who abdicated this week, was obliged by events to become a lead protagonist in Spain’s often rocky transition from the Franco dictatorship to democracy, as a constitutional monarch, King Felipe has a more ceremonial role, in line with his European peers.

Yet Spain’s 1978 constitution allots to its monarch the right to “arbitrate and moderate” in affairs of state. He can act as an intermediary behind the scenes as his father sometimes did, but he needs to be seen to be above politics, polarised both at national level and between central government and nationalist governments in Catalonia and the Basque country. It is one thing for this personable prince, with his photogenic wife and two daughters, to be the mainstay of Spain’s Hola! magazine, quite another for the king to get mired in existential issues such as Catalan secession.

In Thursday’s low-key ceremony proclaiming him king, Felipe called for a “renovated monarchy for a new age”. The crown, he said, must “act with integrity, honesty and transparency”. The image of Juan Carlos, popular through most of his 39-year reign, was badly tarnished two years ago when it emerged he was hunting elephants in Botswana at the height of a financial crisis that was costing millions of jobs, and not long after a speech in which he called for “exemplary behaviour” from Spaniards. The royal family as a whole was further damaged when his son-in-law was charged with embezzlement in a saga that has sucked in one of Felipe’s sisters, the Infanta Cristina.

But what the new king has most emphasised so far has been the unity, as distinct to the uniformity, of Spain – of which the Bourbon monarchy is the constitutional guarantor. Neither Artur Mas, the Catalan president, nor Iñigo Urkullu, his Basque counterpart, applauded at the end of the investiture. Mr Mas has called a referendum on Catalonia’s future for November, which Mariano Rajoy, Spain’s centre-right prime minister, has ruled illegal under the constitution King Felipe this week swore to uphold. Mr Mas later said he would have liked to hear the king – a Catalan speaker who ended his speech expressing his thanks in Basque and Catalan as well as Spanish – say “this is a plurinational state”.

That phrase suggests the door is still open to a deal on how a Catalonia with more self-governing powers could fit inside Spain. Indeed Mr Mas, engaged in a dialogue of the deaf with Mr Rajoy, expressed hope the king would try to “reactivate dialogue between institutions”. Yet the Catalan leader has already been outflanked by separatist republicans, who easily beat his mainstream nationalists in the European elections.

This is treacherous ground for anyone, let alone a monarch with circumscribed power at a time of rising republican sentiment. King Felipe has not so much been crowned as endorsed by MPs – whose discredited parties barely scraped half the vote at the European elections – under a constitution that should be open to reform. The left embraced Juan Carlos, moreover, in good part to deny the right a monopoly over the monarchy during the democratic transition. Changing the royal guard from Juan Carlos to Felipe marks the end of that transition. But only if this triggers other changes – such as reform of political parties, the highly politicised judiciary, and the 1978 constitution – will it spark the process of renewal Spain needs.

Las negritas son mías.