THE future of Spain’s monarchy loomed over the country’s nascent electoral campaign last week after a former prime minister savaged his successor for not protecting the royal family from rising public hostility.

Jose Maria Aznar denounced a recent wave of attacks on the royals that has included the burning of images of King Juan Carlos and Queen Sofia by Catalan nationalists.

“Spain is suited to a constitutional monarchy,” said Aznar, a conservative who lost power to Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, the Socialist prime minister, in 2004. Aznar said Zapatero’s failure to stop the attacks would lead to a “national crisis”.

His comments followed the king’s unprecedented statement last week in defence of the monarchy which, he said, “has provided the longest period of stability and prosperity that Spain has ever experienced under democracy”.

A court case next month, when a cartoonist will face a maximum two-year prison sentence for “insulting the crown”, is certain to intensify debate as the country prepares for an election next spring: public indignation has been stirred over what seems an anachronistic law in 21st-century Spain.

The cartoon in a satirical magazine last summer showed Crown Prince Felipe having sex with his wife, Princess Letizia Ortiz, above the caption: “Do you realise that if you get pregnant it will be the closest thing to work I’ve done in my life?” This was a reference to a government award of £2,000 to mothers on the birth of each child.

More recently the royal family, which is exempt from tax, was pressured into appointing an auditor after a campaign for more transparency over how it spends its annual budget of £5.5m.

One sign of trouble came last October when the hitherto popular king – once revered for foiling a right-wing military coup in 1981 when he ordered the army back into barracks – found himself the target of environmentalists over reports that on a trip to Russia he had shot a tame bear that had been plied with vodka.

That marked the beginning of a wave of attacks that included calls on the “people’s king” to step down.

Another court case is pending after the arrest of two Catalan separatists for burning photographs of the king and queen. Prosecutors have demanded prison sentences of 15 months.

For a video of Catalans burining images of the king click here

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