The Diplomat
The spokeswoman of the Popular Group in Congress, Cuca Gamarra, yesterday requested the appearance of the head of the Executive, Pedro Sánchez, in the Plenary Session of Congress to report on his brief conversation with the President of the United States, Joe Biden, a “fleeting” conversation of “30 seconds” which, in her opinion, caused “embarrassment”, reports Europa Press.
The Popular Party made this request after Biden and Sánchez spoke for half a minute while walking through the corridors of NATO in Brussels. The contact took place after the family photo of the allied leaders, at which point Sánchez approached Biden to greet him, as captured by the cameras.
At a press conference after the meeting of the Board of Spokespersons, Gamarra explained that the Popular Group has requested Sánchez’s appearance to give an account of the NATO summit and the “scarce 30 seconds” that he met with the President of the United States before the “astonished gaze of all Spaniards”.
Gamarra justified the appearance before Parliament on the grounds that the chief executive himself said that “he dealt with matters of importance for Spain”. “We believe it is appropriate that here in the seat of national sovereignty he should give an account of what those conversations consisted of and what issues were discussed in relation to them,” he said.
In his opinion, “it is not acceptable” that Spaniards should be “embarrassed and ashamed to see the spectacle of converting what should be a normal relationship” between the President of the Government and the President of the United States into a “fleeting conversation” and that the Executive should try to make them see that a meeting “in a corridor” is “the way to relate to strategic partners”.
Gamarra pointed out that “friendly countries such as Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania” did hold meetings with the President of the United States, but the meeting with Sánchez “remained solely and exclusively” a “mere exchange of steps along a corridor”, “however the President of the Government wants to paint it”.
In addition, the spokeswoman for the Popular Group in Congress has also stated that Spain’s “loss of weight in international politics” since Pedro Sánchez came to Moncloa “must be subject to parliamentary control”.
For his part, the spokesman for the Popular Group in the Senate, Javier Maroto, said that “calling a bilateral summit to be glued to Biden is to make Spain look ridiculous”. In his opinion, the President of the Government made a “historic ridicule” because it was “22 steps next to one person”.
With Sánchez,” he said, “we have gone from welcome Mr. Marshall to welcome Mr. Biden”. “The same ridicule, then in black and white and today in full colour”, Maroto told journalists.
From the government, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Arancha González Laya, assured Cadena SER that the dialogue was not limited to the few seconds shown in the images, because before the walk down a corridor and the family photo, all the leaders spent thirty minutes “alone and out of the cameras” in which, she said, “the President of the Government and the President of the United States had the opportunity to talk”.
The government’s spokesperson, María Jesús Montero, stated, at the end of the Council of Ministers meeting, that beyond the minutes that the “meeting, greeting or contact” of Pedro Sánchez and Joe Biden lasted, we are now in a position to resume an agenda of matters of common interest.
The White House only confirmed that Biden had “a separate conversation” with Sánchez, in which they spoke “very briefly”, in reference to the contact in the corridor. In a statement, the US administration specified that, in addition to the Spanish prime minister, the US leader had this type of brief contact with the presidents of Slovakia, Zuzana Caputova, and Bulgaria, Rumen Radev, as well as with the prime ministers of Montenegro, Zdravko Krivokapic, Norway, Erna Solberg, Portugal, António Costa, and Luxembourg, Xavier Bettel.
