The King's Visit

The century-old relationship between Spain and America exceeds in historical terms that of any other European nation. Columbus, De las Casas and Vitoria are at the origin of the complex incorporation of the American continent to modernity and the subsequent dispute between European powers for the domination of the territories, for their colonization. From then on, Atlanticism began to be constituted as an essential strategy to face a new universal vision of humanity, in which all knowledge would be possible after the decisive fact that the whole world could be known. The liberal revolutions, also called Atlantic Revolutions, directed the sense of knowledge towards the unstable path of progress of political freedoms and equality of people before the law. Along this bloody and tortuous path, history struggled painfully to turn what had been imaginable into certainty, and individual and collective aspirations into rights. Democracy survives today in a globalized world where the liberal order seems to be mutating towards another order, still undefined, but already called that of "strategic competition" between powers. 

Spain and the United States have endeavoured to rewrite their common history on the basis of links established on the basis of respect for human rights, the expansion of freedoms, commitment to security and the defence of democratic values. For decades, the interests of both countries and the understanding between both societies have built a solid framework of collaboration and reliable alliances whose repercussions provide extraordinary capabilities in terms of security and cooperation to the whole of international relations. To the world, in short. Now even more unknown and disconcerting than it was, in the face of the technological development brought about by the fourth industrial revolution, the unpredictability of 5G communication, the effects of climate change, social and political instability, commercial globalisation and, unfortunately, crime and disease. 

Thanks to the progress of democracy and the European and Atlantic commitment of our country, Spain has developed a system of foreign representation in which the Crown, subject to the Constitution and the sovereignty of the Spanish people and directed from the competent organs of government, acts as an active institution capable of strengthening international relations, which produces beneficial effects for our society and for all our allies and the international community. President Trump has invited King Philip VI to an official visit in April. Some will strive to seek different and more local interpretations to a meeting between the representative of the first power and that of our social and democratic state. But the meaning of the visit has to do with the present and future of international order.