Spanish king calls for unity in difficult times

MADRID - King Juan Carlos of Spain on Tuesday appealed to nationalists to leave their feelings to one side given the current crisis.

In a letter published on the official website of the Spanish Royal Family, Juan Carlos said the country was in a decisive moment to assure the welfare state which cost so much to achieve.

"In these circumstances, the worst thing we can do is to divide our strength, feed dissent, follow dreams and open wounds," reads the letter.

"It is time for unity of society on all levels in defense of the social and democratic model that we have all chosen," the King wrote, admitting his worries over the current economic climate, while highlighting the values of "work, effort, merit, generosity, dialogue, ethics, sacrificing personal interests for the general interest."

The King published the letter less than a week after over a million people demonstrated on the streets of Barcelona in favor of the independence of the Catalan region in the north-east of the country.

The sheer numbers of people who took part in the march came as a shock to the rest of Spain, but serves to highlight the increased nationalist feeling in Catalonia, where among other things, most people speak the Catalan language rather than the Castilian Spanish used in the rest of the country (with the exception of the Basque Country, another region with strong pro-independence feelings).

The President of the Catalan Autonomous Community Artur Mas is scheduled to visit Spanish Prime Minister Marian Ra in Madrid in two days.