Shut up, he explained

The BBC reports:

Spain's King Juan Carlos told Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez to "shut up" as the Ibero-American summit drew to a close in Santiago, Chile. The outburst came after Mr Chavez called former Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar a "fascist".

Mr Chavez then interrupted Spanish PM Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero's calls for him to be more diplomatic, prompting the king's outburst.

It is a justly well known story that King Juan Carlos ensured the defeat of a military coup in Spain in 1981, six years after the death of Franco, by calling on the armed forces to respect the constitution. As one author, Francisco Medina, put it on the 25th anniversary of the coup:

"If the king had decided to support the coup, the coup would clearly have succeeded," Medina said. "Those members of the military who moved against the coup moved in support not of democracy but of the king, who was the heir" to General Francisco Franco.

The King had earlier presided over the final extirpation of fascism in the Spanish polity by officially dissolving Franco's party, the Falange Española Tradicionalista, in April 1977. The groupuscules claiming the mantle of Francoism have, ever since the restoration of democratic elections, been able to muster barely one per cent of the vote between them.

The altercation between the King and President Chavez is thus quite fitting when you consider their respective histories. One of them thwarted a military coup; the other tried to launch one.