Mort als Borbons
Seen in our neighborhood the day of King Felipe VI's visit to Barcelona to attend the the Barcelona New Economy Week innovation awards with Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez.
The king is the head of state and commander in chief of the armed forces. He is also especially unpopular in Catalunya, where approximately 2/3 of the population favors abolishing the constitutional monarchy in favor of a republic, according to the Spanish media. This compares to about 40% of the Spanish population. A shop keeper I spoke to in the el Born neighborhood shared this opinion, and found his official visit an affront, not to mention an expensive inconvenience for the local citizenry and government.
Felipe VI, of the Spanish House of Bourbon (yes, it's still a thing!) has reigned since 2014 when his father Juan Carlos I abdicated in his favor. Spain, like Great Britain, is governed as a parliamentary constutional monarchy. The king acts in a largely ceremonial role: his acts are not valid unless countersigned by a minister, who then assumes political responsibility for the act in question. The Prime Minister is elected by the Congress of Deputies, the lower of the two houses of the Spanish Parliament or Cortes Generales.
Juan Carlos (usually called the 'king emeritus') has been all over the news this year for allegedly accepting kickbacks from Saudi Arabia for interceding to help a Spanish consortium win the contract to build a high speed rail link between the cities of Mecca and Medina.