The Diplomat
King Philip VI attended yesterday the ceremony of transmission of the presidential command to the new president of Chile, Gabriel Boric, in an event attended by prominent personalities of the international left -with the notable absences of Venezuela and Nicaragua- and which was described as “historic” by the two ministers of Unidas Podemos who accompanied the Monarch, the Second Vice President and Minister of Labor and Social Economy, Yolanda Diaz; and the Minister of Equality, Irene Montero.
“We are going to give our best to rise to the challenges,” declared Boric after receiving the baton from his predecessor, Sebastián Piñera, and becoming the youngest president in Chile’s history. Afterwards, the King and the many guests at the ceremony attended a lunch hosted by the new president and the first lady, Irina Karamanos, at the Cerro Castillo Presidential Residence in Viña del Mar.
The investiture ceremony, held at the National Congress headquarters in Valparaíso and attended by 500 people, was attended by prominent representatives of the international left who were included in the list of 26 free invitations. Among them were Gustavo Petro, leader of the Colombian left and pre-candidate for the presidential elections; former Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff, former Bolivian vice-president Álvaro Marcelo García Linera, Spanish MP for Más País Íñigo Errejón and former leader of the British Labour Party Jeremy Corbyn.
On the other hand, there was no representative of Daniel Ortega’s regime in Nicaragua -Nicaraguan writers Sergio Ramírez and Gioconda Belli, recognized opponents of the government, were invited- nor of Nicolás Maduro’s Venezuela -in this case, there was no opponent either-. Boric has received very derogatory words from Maduro for his criticism of the governments of the so-called “Bolivarian axis”. Cuba was represented by its foreign minister, Bruno Rodríguez, and Mexico by historian Beatriz Gutiérrez Müller, president of the Coordination of Historical and Cultural Memory and wife of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador. The presidents of Colombia and Brazil, Iván Duque and Jair Bolsonaro, declined to attend.
Díaz and Montero
On the Spanish side, the King traveled to Chile with an unusually large delegation that included Yolanda Díaz and Irene Montero, who on Thursday already accompanied the Monarch in his first meeting with Gabriel Boric.
“Today hope in Chile bears the name of Gabriel Boric,” declared Yolanda Diaz on her Twitter account. “An honor to attend a historic day before the people and peoples of Chile. The new government picks up the legacy of social struggles and will advance in rights and a better democracy”, added the vice president, who also gave an interview to CNN Chile in which she stated that “there is an enormous hope around the project that opens from the hand of President Boric, which engages with a new political time”.
For her part, Irene Montero declared on the same social network that yesterday was “a historic day for the people of Chile, which with the living memory of Salvador Allende reopens the great avenues. In the transmission of the presidential command and formation of the new Government of Chile, with overflowing emotion”. Montero also held “an affectionate meeting” with Álvaro García Linera, Gustavo Petro, Jeremy Corbyn and the future Minister of the Interior of Chile, Izkia Siches Pastén.
The King represents Spain in the inaugurations of Ibero-American presidents, a task that Don Felipe has been assuming since 1996 when he was still Prince of Asturias. This is the eighth participation of Philip VI in an inauguration of an Ibero-American president since he became King, since he was in 2018 in that of the Mexican Andrés Manuel López Obrador; in 2019 in that of the Panamanian Laurentino Cortizo; in 2020 in those of the Uruguayan Luis Lacalle Pou and the Bolivian Luis Arce; in 2021 in those of the Ecuadorian Guillermo Lasso Mendoza and the Peruvian Pedro Castillo; and in 2022 in that of the Honduran Xiomara Castro.
On the other hand, what is not so frequent is the presence of a Spanish delegation as large as the one that has traveled to Chile, with the two ministers and the president of the Senate, Ander Gil. It is customary for the King to attend the inauguration of new heads of state in Latin America accompanied by the Minister of Foreign Affairs. However, the events in Ukraine have forced José Manuel Albares to suspend his presence at the Chilean presidential ceremony and to travel directly from Mexico to Madrid to receive yesterday his Estonian counterpart, Eva-Maria Liimets, which has allowed Yolanda Díaz to increase her representative role.
This was the second occasion in which a member of Podemos in the Government accompanies the King in an inauguration of an Ibero-American president. In November 2020, the then first vice-president, Pablo Iglesias, attended the inauguration of the president of Bolivia, Luis Arce, who invited him in a personal capacity. The attendance of the then leader of Podemos was particularly controversial because he kept a parallel agenda during his stay in Bolivia, including the signing of the so-called Declaration of La Paz with several politicians of the Latin American left, including the Argentine president, Alberto Fernández, Luis Arce, former presidents Evo Morales (Bolivia), Rafael Correa (Ecuador), Dilma Rousseff (Brazil), Alexis Tsipras (Greece) and former Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero.
