The political relationship between Mexico and Spain has been at a standstill and deadlocked. Andrés Manuel López Obrador once again defended the veto of Felipe VI from Claudia Sheinbaum’s inauguration for refusing to apologize for the excesses committed during the Conquest and the Colonial period, to the stupefaction of Pedro Sánchez, who described as “sad” and “inexplicable” the decision to exclude the Spanish head of state and the diplomatic crisis between the two countries “due to the political interest of some.” “This is not a personal matter, it is an issue that has to do with respect for peoples,” said the Mexican president at his press conference on Thursday.
López Obrador ignored his Spanish counterpart’s questions and did not explicitly refer to Sánchez. Instead, he insisted that the King’s exclusion was justified and that the snub first came from Spain, when Felipe VI refused to respond to the request for an apology he sent in March 2019, just three months after coming to power. The Mexican government cannot understand that the Spanish head of state has decided to stay on the sidelines and considered it an act of “disrespect” to the president’s investiture and to indigenous peoples.
Claudia Sheinbaum closed ranks with her predecessor and political mentor, and agreed to inherit a diplomatic disagreement that has lasted for more than five years, just days before assuming the presidency on October 1. “It is not only an insult to the president, the man, but to the people of Mexico,” said the president-elect, in a joint event on Wednesday with López Obrador, after the statement she published to explain why she did not invite the Monarch, as EL PAÍS reported.
López Obrador read the 2019 letter again and once again stirred up diplomatic differences to gain domestic advantage. Less than a week after the change in government, the arrival of the first woman to the presidency has been relegated to the background and the debate has once again focused on him, an art that he mastered during his mandate and that has allowed him to control the media narrative, to the detriment of other issues that are not so easy to capitalize on in the political arena. “Mexico is no longer a colony of any foreign country,” said the president. “They were very spoiled because, during the neoliberal period, they came to make their August from Spain,” he said. “The political and economic elites saw Mexico as a land of conquest.” In the president’s mind, the most important thing is not the inauguration ceremony – which will be historic for the country – or whether the claim to the colonial past is justified or not, or finding a diplomatic solution, but the “campaign” that, he said, the Spanish government launched against his administration.
The veto imposed on Felipe VI is unprecedented. Whether as Monarch or Prince of Asturias, the King was present at the inauguration of López Obrador in 2018, that of Enrique Peña Nieto in 2012 and that of Felipe Calderón in 2006. The stalemate and diplomatic friction occurred between two Administrations that on paper have ideological affinities and between two countries with a shared history. “Behind all this there is enormous sadness because two brother peoples, due to the political interest of some, cannot have the best relations between peoples and between two progressive governments that share values and probably policies,” Sánchez declared on Wednesday in New York.
The Spanish president made it clear that the request for an apology was a red line that he would not cross, but he regretted that the request reached the point of paralysis. For the Spanish authorities, the issue is about the snub to their head of state, an institutional figure, which led to the decision not to have official representation at the event. The head of government and the ambassador will not be present and it is up in the air whether other politicians will attend in a personal capacity, such as Vice President Yolanda Díaz, who met with Sheinbaum in January and had said before the diplomatic crisis that her intention was to be present. “It is a shame that they are trying to use the figure of Felipe VI in a controversy that does not respond to the feelings of Spanish society. Our purpose is to defend the institutions and not accept exclusion,” Sánchez concluded.
“We want to be part of this exercise of commemoration, to remember the past and, above all, to share projects and challenges for the future,” said Felipe VI at the 2021 Ibero-American Summit, when Mexico celebrated 200 years as an independent country. Three years later, the discussion remains anchored in the past, but what is at stake is the present and the future. That shared destiny is in the hands of both governments.
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