The Diplomat
The President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, and the Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares, have praised the “brave” decision of the President of the United States, Joe Biden, to withdraw from the presidential elections next November.
“All my admiration and recognition for the brave and dignified decision of President Joe Biden,” declared Pedro Sánchez through the social network Capitol and has been exemplary in its support for Ukraine in the face of Putin’s Russian aggression,” he added. “A great gesture from a great president who has always fought for democracy and freedom,” he concluded.
For his part, José Manuel Albares declared to the press in Brussels, before participating in the EU Foreign Affairs Council (CAE), that Biden has made “a brave decision, a worthy decision and a decision that deserves all respect,” and that “underlines the lofty vision of President Biden and the sense of state of a person who has not had it easy during his presidency.”
He has made “that decision because he believes it is the best for his party and his country, and that deserves all our respect and all our affection,” insisted Albares, who recalled the great challenges that Biden has had to face during his presence, such as the assault on the Capitol at the beginning of his mandate and the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and highlighted the harmony between Spain and the United States during his presidency on issues such as “gender equality, the fight against climate change and support for multilateralism.”
On January 6, 2021, a group of supporters of then-President Donald Trump broke into the United States Capitol to prevent the ratification of the results of the November 3 election, in which Biden had won. The violent protests left five dead and fifty arrested. In Spain, both the Government and the opposition condemned the assault on the Capitol and Sánchez expressed his confidence in “the strength of United States democracy.”
Since Biden’s inauguration, on January 20 of that year, Sánchez had to wait almost a year and a half to have a true bilateral conversation with the North American president, despite the Spanish Government’s frequent statements in support of the North American president. In 2021, the closest thing to a meeting was a fleeting conversation in mid-June 2021, during the recent NATO Summit in Brussels. The conversation barely lasted half a minute as they both walked through the hallways of the building.
The first bilateral meeting itself took place in June 2022, on the sidelines of the NATO Summit in Madrid. During the meeting, both leaders signed a new Joint Declaration in which the two countries committed to expanding the number of North American destroyers at the Rota base (Cádiz) from four to six. The US has four destroyers in Rota since 2014 and 2015 (USS Carney, USS Donald Cook, USS Porter and USS Ross), integrated into the NATO anti-missile shield. The reinforcement of the anti-missile shield, which had already been proposed during the Presidency of Donald Trump, will force the number of North American soldiers in Rota to increase by 600 and to review the Bilateral Agreement between Spain and the United States.
Sánchez and Biden met again in May 2023 at the White House. At this meeting, the two leaders committed to asking the technical teams of both governments to meet “as soon as possible” to develop the details of the removal of nuclear waste in Palomares, the town of Almería contaminated in 1966 due to the accident. of two American planes while flying over Spain.
