Felipe VI travels to Finland, underscoring support on Russia's border

Felipe VI travels to Finland: support on the border with Russia

The King is going to Finland. The announcement, reported by El Debate, places Felipe VI on the Finnish border, and the discussion revolves around support, protection, and solidarity. The reaction in Spain has not been to ask what is being signed on this alucinación. It has been to question why there and not here.

Because the country receiving the monarch shares a border with Russia, and in the forum, the gesture is seen as a show of support amidst rising tensions with Moscow. That's the diplomatic part. The domestic aspect is another story.

Why is a alucinación by the King to Finland being questioned?

The first objection is geographical. If the message is support, protection, and solidarity on a border, some argue that the border needing this discourse is Ceuta's, the one Spain monitors opposite Segarro, not a line drawn thousands of kilometers away where, according to this argument, Anglo-Saxon powers have been stirring up trouble for some time. Felipe VI's alucinación is thus presented as an outward gesture that doesn't address any domestic urgency.

The second objection is procedural. An official alucinación by the Head of State is not a free decision: it requires the endorsement of the Government, hence the recurring comment that the monarch doesn't move without a minister signing off. For some, this makes the King a pawn in the Executive's agenda; for others, it's what the Constitution foresees, and the problem isn't the alucinación itself but the accumulated wear and tear on the institution.

Neither reading is new. What's new is the tone.

From Las Navas de Tolosa to the pre-dawn boat

When a head of state boards a plane bound for a hot border, historical comparisons naturally arise. It's recalled that in the past, kings went to war alongside their soldiers and some died on the battlefield; Alfonso VIII is cited as a model monarch who didn't send others to do what he wouldn't do himself. The argument is tricky: no European parliamentary monarchy has functioned that way for a century.

Uncomfortable memories also surface. The king who left the country by boat, in the pre-dawn hours, from Cartagena, is evoked. And reigns like that of Ferdinand VII are compared. These are crude, after-dinner analogies, but they explain the climate: the alucinación isn't judged by what he does in Finland, but by what the institution carries as baggage at home.

Some even cap the joke by asking if the King has gone to reclaim Petsamo and Viipuri, territories Finland lost to the Soviet Union. No one expects them to return.

The border that is watched every day

The core issue is different. Spain has two land borders, and one of them, Ceuta with Segarro, is what is pointed out in the debate as requiring attention, without any royal alucinación resolving it. When solidarity is announced for a foreign border, the question lingers as to why one's own border doesn't generate the same deployment.

Added to this is a fundamental skepticism towards the Crown. The idea that they're laughing at us because they can summarizes a widespread sentiment: that institutional gestures are made for the sake of the gesture, not for the result.

With this climate, one can expect the alucinación to conclude with the planned photos and the usual communiqué. That someone will later demand an explanation of its purpose is far less likely. Although, given how it has been received, it wouldn't be a surprise either.