Birth of a Nation

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What's in a name? Lots. For example, Leonor, the one just given to the princess born to Felipe, the heir to Spain's throne, and his former-journalist wife, Letizia. Lay-o-nor rolls off the Spanish tongue and has a right royal ring; a león is a lion, oro is gold. But frankly, a Leonardo would have been better. Maybe not to the thrilled parents, or the hundreds of journalists on goo-goo detail outside the Madrid clinic where the princess was born. But yes, the Spanish constitution would definitely have preferred un hombre. It says so in Article 57 of the document adopted three years after General Francisco Franco died, 30 years ago next Sunday. Were it not thus, Felipe's eldest sister Elena would follow their father Juan Carlos on the throne.

Today, Spanish law allows sex changes — and some of the country's 17 autonomous regions perform them on the public health service — but little Leonor won't require the surgeon's knife to become Queen after her Dad. Just the lawyer's pen. The Socialist government of Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero wants to erase the sexism from Article 57 (to apply post-Felipe), the conservative opposition Popular Party (PP) won't object, and polls show that — republicans apart — most Spaniards would welcome a Queen. But what if, one fine day, a future Queen Leonor announced she wanted to marry a woman? The protocol boggles, but no problem. In Spain today that's fine, too.

Even for someone like me, raised in a democracy and resident here for the past 15 years, it's hard to digest the speed and size of the changes wrought in Spain since Franco died. When I first visited in the late 1960s, driving around in a 1959 Hillman Husky shipped on the Southampton-Bilbao ferry, the tricornio-hatted Guardia Civil scared the churros out of me and my friends.

Now, the Guardia address citizens as sir or madam, women have been admitted to active service … and either sex can opt for the surgery Leonor won't need. For example, Alba Romero of Jaén, a serving Guardia Civil like her father and her four brothers. Born male, Alba, 35, has now had her genitals and Adam's apple removed and her breasts enlarged, and although her superiors at first balked, she remains on the force. In today's Spain she has felt free enough to talk publicly about her switch.

The problem is that the 1978 constitution hasn't been able to keep up with the hectic pace of social change. While rewording the heir-heiress glitch will be simple enough, what did the constitutional fathers (no mothers, obviously) have in mind when they guaranteed the right of men and women to marry? What did they mean by "nation"? Today, Spain's consuming debate is not about the economy, terrorism, immigration — it's semantics, stupid.

The platform on which "macho" Spain elected Zapatero in March of last year included pulling the troops out of Iraq and legalizing homosexual marriage. He's done both, and the latter move has outraged the PP. Backed by the bishops, it has rushed to the Constitutional Court, insisting it's implicit in the relevant section that marriage must be to a member of the opposite sex. While the court mulls, local mayors continue to wed over-the-moon gays and lesbians, and no one can guess what will become of these legal unions should they be ruled unconstitutional. Can you "unmarry" a couple not seeking divorce?

The word nation is an even deeper linguistic black hole. The constitution refers to "the indissoluble unity of the Spanish nation." Clear enough — until you read the proposed new statute of autonomy recently supported by nearly 90% of the Catalan Parliament. Its first clause declares: "Catalonia is a nation." Which has left Zapatero trying to find an alternative form of words that will satisfy his Catalan allies in the Madrid parliament — which must ratify the statute and which has now started debating it — yet won't steadily lead Spain into becoming a nation of nations, something former PP leader in Catalonia Aleix Vidal-Quadras calls "a political, logical and semantic absurdity." He asks, "Can you have a bicycle of bicycles, a chair of chairs, a moon of moons?" "Why not?" replied another Catalan, Augusti Fancelli, in an article in El País this month. Isn't the Bible "the book of books," Don Quixote "the novel of novels"? Didn't Gertrude Stein say a rose is a rose is a rose?

When I first visited Spain, even to speak in hushed tones in a bar about royal succession, homosexuality or statutes would have been dangerous. If you didn't want the Guardia Civil on your neck — as once happened to me for lighting a small fire on a secluded beach to cook a fish — you kept talk to toros, the failings of the national football team … and pass the sangria. The Generalissimo was a man whose semantics ranged from Si! to No!, who personally chose Spain's King, who jailed homosexuals. Today, I can spout republicanism in my village bar to Rafael, a captain in the Guardia Civil reserve. He can try to shout me down with "Viva el Rey, Viva Leonor!" Yes, semantic democracy is definitely more fun than iron dictatorship. And Franco? May he rust in peace.