The last thing I heard from King Juan Carlos of the mainland that Thursday was three or four heartbreaking screams of “Long live the King” and “Long live Spain”, screams that broke the stillness of the overcast day in Sanxenxo, followed by A little applause from the jetty, where journalists and a few local residents crowded, an almost tedious act considering the size of the marina. It was noon and the Bribon, the king emeritus’s ship, was being towed by a rope to enter the waters of the Pontevedra estuary. Lonely, accompanied by four other crew members who were not the starters with whom he will compete in the regatta, the King Emeritus sat at the helm on his last throne, a cushioned seat for him on a sailboat that will skipper six meters in height the boat and train for the Spanish Championship, which takes place this weekend in the Rías Baixas.
23 years ago, the King of Spain visited Sanxenxo and this port of Pontevedra for the first time. He was received by the President of the Xunta, Manuel Fraga, and the Mayor (who was the same as now, Telmo Martín) and numerous councilors and hundreds of residents who crowded the security fences with extraordinary security measures that had covered half of the city. Screams, fainting from the heat, tears, cheers, impressive gifts from the authorities to His Majesty, then untouchable, when the Giralda boat, which had belonged to his father Juan de Borbón, was moored in the waters of Sanxenxo to surprise and to move of the monarch. Traffic disruption in the city center, disembarkation of the provincial mayors, shouts of “Long Live the King” and “Long Live the King”. This Tuesday, it was a boy of about 20 who broadcast the old king’s greatest token of love live for a minority YouTube channel: “I’m sorry, I missed a tear,” he said, when Juan Carlos I. im Bribón took a seat. “Nobody applauds! Nobody shouts ‘Long live Spain’!” he lamented another time. “He’s waving!” he shouted, despite the king hoisting a sail, although he had previously waved briefly, from the car without rolling down the window (the window is the media star, whether rolled down or not) or from the boat, by you climb on it.
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That Thursday, the car that took him to Sanxenxo from his friend Pedro Campos from the nearby municipality of Nanín did not even stop at the Real Club Náutico and drove to the end of the breakwater where his boat was waiting. He walked down the stairs, assisted by his cane and a companion, and boarded the boat with some agility for his 85 years. He’s already been to sea, the only thing that stays the same for him in Sanxenxo. Without the popular heat, in the midst of the indifference of the neighbors and with the institutional coldness veiled by his old house and by order of his son Felipe VI. was decreed, the sea remains for the old king, the Atlantic, not even the Mediterranean Sea of Mallorca, the natural refuge of the Bourbons. There is nothing in his life in Spain other than the sea and his old crew (Roi Álvarez, Iñaki Castañer, Jane Abascal, Pedro Campos and Alberto Viejo), the last hill of a homeland that dominated to the point where it became considered untouchable all vices and alleged crimes that this entails.
The knave was towed by a motorboat and the figure of the king was perfectly recognizable from land (waistcoat, cap, sunglasses, hand on a rod). A safety dinghy behind, two helicopters flying over and scouting terrain that was nothing more than the Atlantic, still like a plate. A north wind blew 80/90, so north-west; Intensity from 7 to 9 knots, wind direction between 270 and 290 degrees. El Bribon was towed towards the area of Ons Island where the wind was blowing and he practiced there for about three hours. Upon his return, the King Emeritus got back into the car that took him back to Campos’ house, where he remains imprisoned between shellfish and a woman, Campos’, who interprets the signs of the zodiac.
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