The shadow of El Pardo was heavy and long,
When a young prince was summoned
to play a part wrong.
The Generalissimo watched
him through the years,
To mold a successor of silence and fears.
He took the young Bourbon and taught him to wait,
Beside the grim gears of the fascist old state.

“Stay loyal, Juan Carlos,” the dictator said,
“And keep the crown safe when I’m buried and dead.”
The prince swore an oath to the system of iron,
While the democrats cursed him as Franco’s young lion.
But behind the calm eyes of the student in uniform,
The king was preparing to ride out the storm.

When the old general died in the chill of the fall,
The young monarch stepped up to answer the call.
He dismantled the prisons, he opened the gate,
And brought back democracy into the state.
The right wing felt cheated, the generals grew red—
They had fostered a wolf in the dictator’s bed.

× × ×

Then came eighty-one, on the dark winter track,
When the ghosts of the past tried to batter their way back.
The twenty-third day of the February rain,
When a madness returned to the heart of old Spain.
Tejero marched into the Congress of State,
With a pistol held high and a cargo of hate.

He fired at the ceiling, he ordered the floor,
“Stay quiet, you bastards, or look at the door!”
The tanks rolled in Valencia, Milans del Bosch arose,
To strangle the freedom that everyone chose.
The army was waiting for word from the throne,
To turn the young kingdom back into a stone.

The king did not falter, he stood in the light,
And locked himself deep in his office that night.
He picked up the phone, and with fierce, royal pride,
He ordered the generals back to their side.

“The Crown will not stand for a treasonous blow!
Return to your barracks! The answer is No!”

× × ×

At one in the morning, the television screen
Showed the king in his uniform, tall and serene.
He spoke to the nation, he spoke to the pack,
And drove the dark shadows of history back.
“The Constitution lives! It will never comply
With those who would make the young liberty die!”

The coup was deflated, the soldiers withdrew,
And Tejero’s rebels surrendered their crew.
The communist leaders, the left and the right,
All cheered for the Bourbon who won the great fight.
He had saved the young freedom of Spain with his word,
A champion of law who had silenced the sword.

× × ×

The years spun their glory, then crumbled to rust,
As the gold of the monarch was turned into dust.
Exiled in the desert, away from his land,
The King of the Crisis sits lone in the sand.

Though the history books
carry his scandals and pain,
They remember the night
    that he saved
        the whole of Spain.