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The Council of Ministers approved last Tuesday the granting of the Grand Cross of the Royal and Distinguished Spanish Order of Carlos III for 23 former ministers of the Government of Spain, including members of the Popular Party, such as Jose Manuel Soria The Jose Ignacio Wert, from the PSOE, such as the former Minister of Transport, José Luis Ábalos, and the ephemeral head of Culture and Sports, Màxim Huerta, and the former leader of Podemos, Pablo Iglesias, who was vice president of the country between 2020 and 2021.
The regulation of the Royal and Distinguished Spanish Order of Carlos III describes this recognition as the “highest of the Spanish civil orders and is among the oldest of those currently preserved in the world.”
Its purpose is to “award worthy individuals” for their services to the State and is granted after deliberation by the Council of Ministers and on the proposal of the Prime Minister himself, who acts as Grand Chancellor of the order.
The order has different degrees: necklace, large cross (the one that Pablo Iglesias and company have received), order of number, order and cross. “As a culmination of relevant services to the State,” entry into the order with the category of Grand Cross is usually granted to those who “were or would have been presidents of the Congress of Deputies, the Senate, the Constitutional Court, the General Council of the Judicial Power and the Supreme Court, Government ministers and other high authorities of the State, as well as to those who have been granted another Spanish civil or military Grand Cross, with more than three years of antiquity ”, is included in the article on degrees of the order within the BOE.
For faithful servants of the King
The historic order, one of the oldest Spanish royal orders, along with that of San Fernando, Isabel la Católica and San Hermenegildo, was established by the King of Spain Carlos III on September 19, 1771 with the Latin motto ‘Virtuti et merito’, in order to honor those people who have stood out especially for their good deeds for the benefit of Spain and the Crown. Not surprisingly, as Alfonso Ceballos-Escalera y Gila points out in their study ‘The Royal and distinguished Spanish order of Carlos III’, it is unknown precisely where and when the initial idea for the project could have originated. «Everything seems to indicate that it was Don Jerónimo Grimaldi [importante ministro y diplomático del Rey] who conceived the idea and carried it forward “in response to the plans of General Don Juan Gregorio de Muniain, Secretary of State and of the War Office, who proposed to grant pensions of the Military Orders without the winners having to belong to them.
When Grimaldi found out about this proposal, he dissuaded the King from approving the plans of this general, as he had another project in mind: that of creating an Order of the Immaculate Conception, in imitation of that of the French Saint-Esprit – in which Grimaldi himself had been solemnly received in 1763 – to reward good servants of the Crown. Carlos III was enthusiastic about an order linked to the Immaculate Conception due to his personal devotion to this Virgin, his general fondness for chivalric orders and because the project precisely coincided with a happy family event, the birthday of his grandson. the Infant Carlos Clemente, which served as the last excuse to establish it.
Carlos III appointed himself Grand Master of the Order and distinguished between two kinds of awards: the “Grand Crosses” and the “Pensionadas”, to which in 1783 the “Supernumerary Knights” was added, the importance of which ranged between the previous two. It was demanded as two immovable requirements for the candidates to enter the order to be meritorious and affection for His Majesty, which meant having purity and nobility of blood until their great-grandparents, as regulated the old charter of Castile and the other regulations in force.
The members of the order had to swear fidelity to the person of the King, to his family, to the protection of the goods of the royal house, to recognize him as Grand Master, to live and die in the Catholic faith, accepting as undoubted the Mystery of the Immaculate Conception. Concepción, and attend at least once a year a full mass and receive communion. Pope Clement XIV granted by bull on February 21, 1772 religious benefits to the order, recognizing to the Grand Master all the ability to dispose of the members in religious matters, including absolution and apostolic blessing.
The insignia of the Order They have varied over time, but their original features remain alive despite the passing of the centuries. As described by Ceballos-Escalera in the aforementioned study, the great cross of the Spanish Order was from its origin a polished silver Maltese cross similar to the one used in the order of Santi-Spiritus, in whose center is the image of the Immaculate Concepción, with the figure of the founding Monarch and the Latin motto Virtuti et Merito, and on the cross the Spanish Royal Crown. This cross or plaque was used embroidered in silver and gold threads –or metal and with rhinestones–, on the left side of the chest, by the knights large crosses, along with a wide band of sky-blue silk with white edges. poured from the right shoulder to the left skirt, its ends joining a narrow ribbon loop of the same kind; and also, in the great solemnities of the Court, with a golden necklace of fourteen links made up of castles, lions, trophies and figures of the founder.
The choice of the colors azure blue and white obeyed a long and secular tradition that attributed them to the Blessed Virgin since the biblical Book of Revelation, when in its twelfth chapter it refers to a woman clothed with the Sun and with a crown of twelve stars, with the Moon under her feet, on a dragon of fire. “The Christian writers saw in this figure the image of the Virgin or of the Church, and that is why it already appears in Byzantine art, and was collected in the Hispanic blessed of the 10th and 11th centuries. So the white corresponds to the tunic of Our Lady, and represents its purity, having been conceived without original sin by divine grace; while blue represents heavenly love and detachment from the worldly, ”says Ceballos-Escalera.
An order that survives all
This order of chivalric aroma achieved a great boom during the caroline and fernandine reignsIt resisted the French invasion first in Seville, later in Cádiz, and again in Madrid, and during the reign of Isabel II it became the civil decoration par excellence of the Monarchy. Since then, the concessions have been directed to all levels of society, both peninsular and overseas, until reaching more than thirty-three thousand awardees from fields as diverse as politics, administration, the military, the Church, the sciences, the letters and the arts.
It was abolished for a few months from the First Republic, but the order was re-established before the Bourbon Restoration in the person of Alfonso XII. Until the arrival of the Second Republic, which again abolished the order, the different provisions that regulated the matters were recast, and criminal cases were included for the loss of distinctions. The Franco dictatorship reestablished the Order on May 10, 1942 against the express wish of the heirs to the Crown. With the constitutional monarchy, the order resurfaced and has reached the present day, allowing the incorporation of women to it since 1983.
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