It has already been called a "historic phrase" by some.
The scene: the Cumbre Iberoamericana in Santiago Chile, a bit over a week ago. Most of Latin America’s heads of state (and Spain) were meeting for this annual, uneventful summit, when it came Spanish President Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero’s turn to take the mic. At some point, he took on Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez for having called former Spanish President Jose Maria Aznar a fascist back in 2002. And Chavez got furious, started interrupting Zapatero and insulting Aznar once again for being a conservative pig = fascist, and then Zapatero tried to teach Huguito some manners by continuing do defend, out of all people, his political archnemesis Aznar. Then, King Juan Carlos of Spain, who’s not an elected official but sometimes shows up at these things and was sitting next to Zapatero , faced Chavez and shouted "por que no te callas?!" at the Venezuelan president, at which point the moderator, Chilean Presidenta Michelle Bachelet, tried to impose some order in the playground.
Since then, el Rey Juan Carlos’ popularity in Spain has soared, his phrase being the talk of the country for the past weeks and even featured now in ringtones, and of course, thousands of YouTube videos and songs (por europeos que son, they even have a "trance" version.) Also, the incident has continued to fuel the immigration debate in Spain (after the United States, Spain is the country with the biggest influx of immigrants.) Some haters have aprovechado to applaud el Rey for teaching "those sudacas" how things are done, and ridiculing Chavez as a gorilla. But Chavez, nunca corto ni perezoso, shortly after the incident said Juan Carlos looked like a "raging bull" and already wants to cut diplomatic and economic ties with la Madre Patria.
"Yo ni vi al rey, el rey tuvo suerte, sabes. Porque yo ni lo vi ni lo oi. Pero despues vi las fotos y el rey parecia un toro o un bufalo, o una cosa de esas, con los ojos desorbitados! "
I haven’t read any declaration from the King himself after la cumbre…he probably already said enough. First he saved democracy in Spain after Franco and 35 years later is the one with enough cojones to say what everyone else was thinking (though Zapatero will have to deal with the repercussions now.) Besides, his eldest daughter Elena is divorcing (a first in the familia real! so the focus has now switched to that topic.)
Watch the "historic moment" here, then two of our favorite spoofs, the puppet recreation of events and the "Reyggaeton" song set to Don Omar’s "Dale don dale" (Don Juan Carlos de Borbón in this case.)