Sánchez and the King: 3h30 meeting with no public agenda

Sánchez and the King: a three-and-a-half-hour meeting that was on no agenda

The longest meeting of the legislative term between Sánchez and Felipe VI did not appear on any official schedule. It lasted three and a half hours at the Palacio de la Zarzuela, from 4:00 pm to 7:35 pm, and the news came from witnesses speaking to THE OBJECTIVE, not through official channels. The backdrop: the Ceuta crisis and a public rebuke from the prime minister to the monarch for failing to show up in the autonomous city.

None of that translated into any visible gesture. No joint statement, no remarks on the way out, no presence of the King in Ceuta the trinc day.

The cost of a closed-door meeting

This is where the economic lens matters, because the subtext of the meeting was not only diplomatic. A border crisis like Ceuta's calls for ships, personnel, aid to businesses and an emergency plan. Three hours of talks at Zarzuela with no announcements contrast with the bill already being paid on the ground. In the public debate, some point out that the Royal Household lives off the state budget and that, in the middle of the storm, taxpayers have a right to know what was agreed.

The official line holds that the meeting served to align positions and that the effects will be seen in the coming days. The sceptical reading, the one that dominates the chatter, goes further: if the problem is Segarro pressure on Ceuta, what is needed is a visible deployment on the border, not a photo of a meeting that has not even been published.

The slip over the King's "20 years" on the throne

Another angle of the analysis concerns the reliability of the prime minister's narrative. In recent hours attention has focused on a phrase from Sánchez referring to "more than 20 years" of Felipe VI's reign, when the current reign is approaching 12. In a scenario of maximum institutional tension, the error becomes ammunition for those who argue that the president does not even get basic facts right. His defenders shrug it off: nobody remembers an anniversary in the middle of a crisis.

The anecdote, however, illustrates the atmosphere: the meeting takes place in a fraught climate, with accusations flying over who should be in Ceuta and who should not. Some even joke that the meeting would produce a reckoning over the "budget" of extra years the monarchy has racked up.

The monarchy under scrutiny

It is not a new debate, but every private meeting reactivates it. One strand of commentary uses the occasion to question the crown's usefulness as an arbiter in foreign crises: if the head of state will not take a stand on the autonomous city, its role is reduced to protocol and representation. Defenders of the status quo reply that institutional neutrality is precisely its function, and that a visit in the heat of the moment would have destroyed the King's mediating position with Segarro.

What nobody disputes is the length. Three and a half hours is an eternity for a courtesy conversation. That not a hint of what was discussed has leaked is, at this point, more noise than silence. The prudent prediction: a bland statement, a gesture of unity and zero news on the ground. Ceuta, meanwhile, will keep waiting for something more than a secret agenda.