Unable to load replication GTID slave state from mysql.gtid_slave_pos: Table 'mysql.gtid_slave_pos' doesn't exist in engine

On a fresh (if I remember well) install of MariaDB on Debian, as a replication slave, I'm getting, in "show slave status":

Last_SQL_Error: Unable to load replication GTID slave state from mysql.gtid_slave_pos: Table 'mysql.gtid_slave_pos' doesn't exist in engine

So I tried a `mysql_upgrad` which told me to try --force as it looked already up to date, legit, so I tried --force, which gave:

mysql.gtid_slave_pos
Error : Table 'mysql.gtid_slave_pos' doesn't exist in engine
status : Operation failed

Don't know what to do from now, I expected to mysql_upgrade to fix it þ