Luis Ayllón
The Spanish government’s slowness in giving Quirino Ordaz the approval to become Mexico’s ambassador to Spain is causing quite a stir in the Spanish media and a great deal of discomfort for President Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
The Mexican leader announced on 11 September that the person chosen to replace Carmen Oñate, who was retiring as head of the Aztec embassy in Madrid, was the former governor of Sinaloa, Quirino Ordaz, something that caused surprise in Mexico, as he is a prominent member of the PRI, a party now in opposition.
The Mexican Foreign Ministry, however, waited for Ordaz to step down as governor and did not process the request for the Spanish authorities’ approval until the beginning of November, as is mandatory for the appointment of new ambassadors. Although there is no established deadline, it is normal, between two countries that maintain close relations and are not immersed in serious disputes, that in a month and a half, at most, the request should be granted.
Alerts were raised in several Mexican media when Quirino Ordaz’s placet was slow to arrive and, in some of them, it was even claimed that the Spanish government had denied it. Diplomatic sources consulted by The Diplomat assured last week that this was not the case, and that the approval had not been denied.
However, two months after the request was made, the Mexican government has still not received the green light to appoint the new ambassador, who, moreover, still has to pass through the Mexican Senate to be ratified.
The Diplomat has learned from sources in the Latin American country that the situation has caused López Obrador a great discomfort, and that he is thus picking up on the Spanish response to his continuous proclamations demanding apologies from Spain and its King for what he considers to be the excesses of the Spanish conquest of Mexico.
Other sources consulted by this website consider it unlikely that Pedro Sánchez’s government will refuse to give Quirino Ordaz the placet, but believe that the delay in giving its authorisation may indeed be related to the unfriendly stance that the current Mexican president has shown since he came to power.
Faced with this situation, in mid-November the Mexican government decided to send Óscar Arturo Esparza Vargas, a veteran diplomat who has been posted to several countries and has held various positions of responsibility in the Mexican Foreign Ministry, to the embassy in Spain as Chargé d’Affaires ad interim.
