Iñaki Urdangarin entering prison this Monday, to serve a sentence of more than five years, is the first time a member of the Spanish royal family has entered jail. It will be, without doubt, one of the headlines of the year and, in part, a reflection of the loss of credibility of the monarchy for Spanish society, which hit rock bottom with Juan Carlos I's abdication and which Felipe VI hasn't managed to pull back. So much so that, for the first time, the king has enormous difficulties with travelling to Catalonia and, to a lesser extent, Navarre and the Basque Country. In the case of Catalonia, where he has been declared persona non grata in a ton of towns, he's experienced in recent days the consequences of his unpopularity and has had to move the Princess of Girona Awards to another municipality and private property, since Girona city council refused authorisation for the exhibition complex.
Urdangarin will enter prison and it's logical and normal that it should be so. He's enjoyed a privileged trial experience, since, with a firm sentence from the Palma court, he's continued to enjoy not only freedom on bail, but also absolute freedom of movement having not had his passport withdrawn and having maintained his residence in Switzerland. In fact, he's flown from Geneva this Sunday to enter prison. There's nothing to say, the law allows that. But it does have to be emphasised that this situation contrasts, for example, with that endured by the Catalan political prisoners in pretrial detention and subjected to unjust deprival of liberty. Justice, certainly, is not equal for all. But to see this, we don't have to just focus on Urdangarin, for whom a series of comforts in prison have been announced which are nothing like the imprisonment of the pro-independence leaders either. The husband of infanta Cristina is, for the state, a lesser evil to manage as well as possible and, on the other hand, the political prisoners are an opportunity to teach a lesson.
The former anti-corruption prosecutor for the Balearic Islands said, in an interview we published this Sunday (link in Catalan), that the king's inviolability should be limited and, last week, the judge in the Nóos case, José Castro, said that Juan Carlos I should have had to testify as a suspect in the case. This strengthens the idea that not all the connections of the Nóos case have emerged, beyond the guilt of all those sentenced. To what point has Urdangarin also been, despite the sentence, a scapegoat in this whole process? This question has no answer and might never have one if Urdangarin doesn't end up speaking out some day. The shadow of the possibility of hidden pieces, meanwhile, will remain and lead to many theories.