Instead, La Presidenta will fly direct to Milan, Italy, and her landing there is being classified as a "stopover" enroute to Rome.
In the major capital of Northern Italy, in whose environs Filipino OFWs are thickest on the ground, GMA will meet with a large delegation representing the more than 100,000 Filipinos who live and work in that area.
Then she will fly down to Rome’s Leonardo da Vinci (Fiumicino) airport to begin her official visit to the Holy See (The Vatican) where she will kiss the Papal ring of the Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI. I guess she will bring him the "news" that the Philippines has at last cancelled the Death Penalty – with which I disagree, of course – but will be warmly welcomed in the Santa Sede just as it was hailed here by the Papal Nuncio and the Catholic Bishops.
Afterwards, GMA will visit the government of Italy, known in Roman parlance (to differentiate it in terminology from the Holy See) as the Quirinale.
She will be welcomed by the newly-elected President of the Italian Republic (a former Communist) and by Prime Minister Romano Prodi, who nudged out Italy’s picaresque former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi – who had "ruled" for an extraordinary five years – to install a Centre-Left government.
From Rome, La Gloria will take another unusual side-trip, this time landing near the large but "unbeautiful" Basque port city of Bilbao (no chorizos there, chico!)
The Basque country, of course, is noted for the fact that the Society of Jesus – yes, the Jesuits under the soldier-saint Ignatius Loyola – was founded there. Most of the early Jesuits ("The Light Cavalry of the Church," as the late Father Horacio de la Costa, S.J. called them) were Basques. So were Miguel de Legaspi, the Conquistador who conquered the Visayas and Luzon for Spain and his grandson Juan Salcedo, who founded Vigan, the capital of Ilocos Sur up north. (He had called it, Ciudad Fernandina).
Spain’s foremost foes of the late Generalissimo Francisco Franco’s Falangist regime were, naturally, Basques – as are the murderous ETA Terrorists whose depredations killed thousands of people. However, they recently declared a "permanent truce", whatever that means.
Just to demonstrate how remorseless and effective the ETA Basque terrorists (good "Catholics," mind you – not the usual fingerpointed Muslims) was the manner in 1973 a squad of them had assassinated no less than Spain’s Prime Minister.
Admiral Carrero Blanco, 70, was the righthand man of El Caudillo Franco. Unfortunately, he was a creature of habit. He went to daily Mass, his car and entourage passing daily on the Calle Claudio Coello. It turned out that an ETA group had dug a tunnel underneath that street and underground planted perhaps a ton of explosives. Carrero Blanco’s car was not only blown up at 9:30 a.m. that day, December 20, 1973, but its wreck ended up atop a neighboring building. Carrero was killed instantly.
Franco, already very ill, was shocked. It was asked how Arias Navarro, the Minister of the Interior and his security services had failed to detect that the Basque group had burrowed a tunnel for weeks under the very street along which the Prime Minister (Presidente del Gobierno) passed every day!
With Franco in hospital, it was then Prince Juan Carlos (not yet the King) who had to perform the funeral honors. Demonstrating his courage at a period in which fear was sweeping the regime in the wake of this high-profile murder, and despite warnings of another ETA attack, Juan Carlos – wearing the uniform of a Rear-Admiral – walked alone at the head of the funeral procession, following the gun-carriage bearing the coffin. He refused to wear a bullet-proof vest – by golly.
Bilbao's only attraction is that it houses the Guggenheim Museum, a futuristic piece of remarkable architecture built by that US foundation there – although when we visited it three years ago, we found the modern-art exhibits there (at the moment, for the display changes) rather unremarkable.
In any event, La Presidenta's real objective – a touristic detour, I'd say – is the elegant city and seaside resort of San Sebastian. It has one of the country's grandest hotels, the Maria Cristina, and was the playground of Spanish aristocracy since the late 19th century.
Naturally, La Glorietta will confer with Spain’s Socialist Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, as well as his democratic party predecessor, former President-Prime Minister Aznar, Racuy and company.
But the real purpose of her trip is to meet her old friends, His Majesty Juan Carlos and Queen Sofia. Most people don’t know that GMA, who was brought up by her mother, Evangeline Macaraig Macapagal, speaking fluent Spanish, has known both the King and his Queen since the years Juan Carlos was still a Prince and aspirant to the throne. The young Prince and Sofia were guests of GMA’s father and mother when Diosdado Macapagal was still President, and the friendship of the teenaged Gloria with the royal couple – followed by many personal visits – strengthened over the years.
King Juan Carlos, who steered Spain from Dictatorship to Democracy (as his biographer Paul Preston describes him) came to the throne of Spain under fascinating circumstances. As historians well know, his Grandfather King Alfonso XIII was toppled from the throne and went into exile aboard a Spanish light cruiser. After he had crushed the Communists and the Leftwing Republicans after years of bitter civil war, Franco – who had joined the Spanish Army when he was barely fifteen – ruled with an iron hand for half a century – and was the original Fascist, whose overthrow of the "Reds" had been assisted by both Adolf Hitler’s Condor Legion and Benito Mussolini’s blackshirts. It’s said their intervention in the Spanish Civil War was their dress-rehearsal for World War II.
Juan Carlos was born in 1938, with his father, Don Juan, the true pretender to the Throne in exile – but with little hope of return. Franco had no male heir, so – when the Prince was only seven, it was suggested that he might be groomed as a possible heir to the Caudillo, provided he was schooled from childhood to carry on the traditions and strictures of the regime. When he was ten, from his Portuguese exile, his father handed Juan Carlos over to Franco, who "educated" him according to the strictest authoritarian traditions.
The way Preston put it, "ever greater friction between his father and Franco made Juan Carlos realize that the dictator would never allow his father to be king." He was thus the only hope for the return of the monarchy. Juan Carlos’ closeness to Franco and their apparent mutual fondness "resulted in widespread suspicion that he would continue to uphold Falangist and authoritarian structures after he came to power."
After a lingering and painful illness, Franco finally died at 5:25 a.m. on November 20, 1975.
Juan Carlos’ ascension to the throne was not rendered easily by his father who shortly after this attempted to assert himself as "jefe de la Casa Real Espanola" and "son and heir of Alfonso XIII and trustee of a secular treasure whose duties he considers cannot be renounced."
It was only on November 28, realizing his bid could not prosper (Franco’s military supporters were still adamant and in place) that Don Juan sent Antonio Fontan with a secret message to La Zarzuela palace declaring that his son be named King of Spain and head of the Borbon dynasty. He would abdicate formally, Don Juan pledged, as soon as there was satisfactory progress towards democracy.
King Juan Carlos has truly fulfilled those expectations – and upheld real democracy in Spain.
La Gloria’s sentimental visit to the King and Queen and to Madre España is significant, in more ways than one. It reaffirms the four-century old friendship between our two peoples and the ineradicable legacy we have received from Spain – her culture, her religion which is ours as well, and the ties not only of blood but of common aspiration that bind us. We are Asian, and live in Asia, but our soul is forever Spanish – in all the virtues along with the faults the Iberian connection conveys.