Almost a year has passed since Pedro Sánchez announced in the traditional press conference at the end of the year that the Government had a clear roadmap to increase the transparency of the Monarchy and promote its modernization, which included important legal reforms. In fact, at that time there was talk of a new Crown law, although later the Executive clarified that it was rather working on more specific legal changes without a complete reform that could serve to reopen the debate between the Monarchy and the Republic in Congress. However, a year later, the Executive does not even have those legal changes on the agenda to increase the transparency of the Royal House, its expenses, its income, its personnel or the way it manages public money given by the citizens. Everything is parked and in the background. According to the Government spokesperson, Isabel Rodríguez, the priority for the Government now is recovery and vaccination, and that is why issues like this are not in the first line of departure for the next Councils of Ministers.

In recent months there have been talks between the Government and the Royal Household to negotiate these legal reforms and carry them forward. From the Executive they assured that in La Zarzuela they had not just decided, and that they were not going to promote anything that did not have the full agreement of the House directed by Jaime Alfonsín. But now the argument for putting those reforms on hold is no longer that there is no impulse from the House of the King, but that the Government has no other priority than economic recovery and vaccination. In recent weeks, press conferences after the Council of Ministers have increasingly focused on a presentation of the economic reforms that are approved within the framework of the recovery plan – there are now two conclaves a week – while the spokesperson and the Ministers flee from any political controversy to prevent the focus from shifting precisely from recovery and vaccination.

The government does not want the clash with the opposition to divert the focus from the good economic news and its management of the pandemic, and its strategy is to avoid any other issue. This is what the spokesperson, Isabel Rodríguez, did when journalists insistently asked her if the Government would support the king emeritus to return to Spain and even to do it to La Zarzuela, which is what he would want according to sources in his environment cited by The confidential. “There is no progress on the regulatory issue [para una mayor transparencia de la Casa del Rey] because the roadmap of this government is economic recovery. It is our priority ”, he insisted. Rodríguez praised “the effort made by King Felipe VI to make the greatest exercise of transparency”, but did not explain what he is referring to, since the rules that regulate it have not changed.

The Government does not go out of its script, and flees from the debates set by the opposition: “Facts in the face of noise. There are 20 million people working, we have 90% vaccination, and we are the first country to receive European funds, ”Rodríguez insisted. He did not even want to clarify if the Government is willing to do something to force the PP to renew the General Council of the Judiciary, which has already served three years with the expired mandate. The Executive focuses on an optimistic message, also regarding the coronavirus. The Minister of Industry, Reyes Maroto, who appeared to present a great aid plan for the tourism sector of 700 million euros, trusted that the new omicron variant will not have effects on the arrival of foreigners to Spain, and the spokeswoman also showed herself convinced that if citizens take the necessary precautions, this Christmas will be much better than 2020, when there was no vaccination. “Let’s all work to avoid going to a Christmas with restrictions,” insisted Rodríguez.