Photo: Pool Moncloa/ Fernando Calvo
The Diplomat. 07/07/2018
The President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, yesterday held a brief meeting with Barack Obama, at the hotel of the outskirts of Madrid in which he has traveled to the hotel on the outskirts of Madrid in which the former president of the States was staying United to participate in a conference in the framework of the Summit of Technological Innovation and Circular Economy.
.Moncloa, who during the previous day did not confirm that the meeting was going to take place, announced it yesterday, through a message in Sánchez’s official account on Twitter, with two photographs of the meeting accompanied by the following text: «Harmony and cordiality in the meeting with Barack Obama. We share the same progressive vision on Climate Change, renewable energies, migration and gender equality”.
Given the tightness of Obama’s agenda, Sánchez decided to move to the hotel where the forum organized by the Advanced Leadership Foundation, led by former adviser to the former US president Juan Verde. There they greeted each other and talked for a little more than a quarter of an hour, a meeting that the government spokesperson, Isabel Celaá, described as «brief but interesting» at the end of the meeting of the Council of Ministers. She added that it was a «cordial meeting of two people who know a lot how a country can go”.
Sánchez, who will foreseeably have the opportunity to greet also next week during the NATO summit in Brussels, to the current president of the United States, Donald Trump, met Obama two years ago when the then tenant of the White House made an official visit to Spain. Then, Obama dedicated a few minutes to each of them leaders of the opposition parties in Spain (Pedro Sánchez, Albert Rivera and Pablo Iglesias). With Sánchez, in addition to commenting on their common hobby of basketball, he spoke about the consequences of the departure of Brexit that had just been decided by the voters of the United Kingdom in a referendum.
