Alana Casanova-Burgess

You've been warned.

It wasn't just any Monday morning in Puerto Rico.

It was January 24th, 2022.

For one thing, kids in Puerto Rico were going back to in-person classes, even though the pandemic was still in full swing.

Some students hadn't been in a classroom for two years because of the earthquakes in the South.

And also, on this Monday, the king was coming.

Felipe Juan Pablo Alfonso de Todos los Santos de Borbón y Grecia, or King Felipe VI, was coming to celebrate the 500th anniversary of the founding of San Juan.

His visit had been postponed from the year before, and the press was poised to cover three carefully choreographed days of meetings.

They had the official schedule, and they were ready to tell us about it.

Those actos protocolares, all of that pomp and circumstance, were in service of a bigger goal, according to TV analysts.

Now, as a U.S.

colony, Puerto Rico can't go around making trade deals with other countries.

But the king was coming with Spain's minister of commerce.

So talking heads on TV, like a former governor, kept saying the visit could spell investment for Puerto Rico.

You know, deals, deals, deals.

So the stakes were high when we woke up that Monday morning, logged on to Twitter or Facebook or Instagram, and saw photos nobody was expecting.

According to police, the statue of the Spanish conquistador Juan Ponce de León in Old San Juan had been vandalized sometime around 4.30 a.m., although vandalized seemed like an understatement.

In photos, we could see this green, bearded sculpture lying on the ground, face up next to his white pedestal.

He was broken in two.

Ponce's legs had come off from his body just below his medieval puffy shorts.