The grandees have also tried to drag King Juan Carlos into the row. "We beg your attention and understanding in finding a solution that will resolve the violation perpetrated on us," they wrote to him. The rebels see the fact that male primogeniture survives in the royal family, regardless of the fact that the current king's oldest child is a daughter, as one reason for striking down the law.

"We feel the monarchy and the nobility should go hand-in-hand," said Mr Temboury. At a tense meeting of the Disputation of Grandees, as the official club for Spanish nobles is known, King Juan Carlos made it clear that he did not back the rebels. "The new regulations for noble titles should make you look to the future," he said in a letter to those congregated there in March.

King Juan Carlos's heir, Prince Felipe, has two daughters. The Spanish constitution would have to be changed if a son were born to allow the elder daughter to inherit the crown.

The Spanish Constitution "protects" certain sections (including the one on fundamental right and freedoms, and the chapter on the Crown) by 1) requiring a strong supermajority to reform them; 2) triggering a constitutional convention if "the principle of the reform" is approved by the Parliament. In other words, suppose Spain wanted to become a Republic and the Congress and Senate voted in favour of the proposed Constitutional reform by ample majorities. This would trigger a dissolution of the Parliament, and elections to a Constituent Parliament which would draft a new Constitution. This is eminiently sensible if you're going to change the form of the State. But now, the inheritance of the Crown is codified in the Constitution (also eminently sensible since Spain had 3 civil wars in the 19th century over a dynastic dispute involving... you guessed it, whether women could acceed to the Crown). Which means that removing the gender discrimination in royal succession (something everyone in Parliament agrees to) would trigger Constitutional Elections. Of course the new Constituent Parliament could just approve the exact same Constitution we have now, with amendments, but the fear is that it would not happen as the Spanish polity is more fractious now than in 1977 (less political violence on the streets, but more fractious nonetheless) and bad things would occur if the whole constitution were up for grabs.

So these male nobles who want to tie their inheritance to the Crown's are just obfuscating. The Spanish Constitution makes no mention of nobility titles: they are considered a matter for civil or even personal law.

The peak-to-trough part of the business cycle is an outlier. Carnot would have died laughing.