Por Espana, con los espanoles

When Por España, con los españoles was published in 1973, Juan Carlos de Borbón was not yet King of Spain. He officially held the title of Prince of Spain, created for him by Francisco Franco after the latter designated him, in July 1969, as his successor as Head of State with the title of king.

The volume thematically gathers the speeches, statements and public writings delivered by Juan Carlos since his designation as Franco’s successor in 1969; the themes addressed sketch the public image that the future sovereign was then seeking to build: youth, the armed forces, professional sectors, national politics, international relations, and the peoples and territories of Spain.

The volume is illustrated with photographs and accompanied by a genealogical tree of the royal family.

Two years later, Franco died on 20 November 1975. Juan Carlos was proclaimed king on 22 November. This began the process that would lead to the transformation of the dictatorship into a parliamentary monarchy and to the democratic Constitution of 1978, bringing Spain into the modern era.

In 1973, Maurice Druon was already a major figure of French literary life and, notably, entered Pierre Messmer’s government as Minister of Cultural Affairs. The two men had maintained a friendly relationship since Druon’s election to the Académie in 1966: Juan Carlos had spent part of his childhood in exile, notably in a French-speaking environment in Switzerland. When he first arrived in Spain in 1948, at the age of ten, he himself recounted that he spoke Spanish “with a French accent.” As an adult, his French was close to perfect, and in 1993 he became the first foreign sovereign since 1919 to deliver a speech in French before the Assemblée nationale.