<h6><strong>Eduardo González</strong></h6> <h4><strong>The Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares, met this Friday in Johannesburg with the Undersecretary of Foreign Affairs of Mexico, María Teresa Mercado, with whom he discussed “the reinforcement of our bilateral fraternal relationship,” according to diplomatic sources reported to <em>The Diplomat</em>.</strong></h4> The meeting took place on the sidelines of the G20 ministerial meeting, months after the diplomatic crisis that broke out last September due to the decision of President Claudia Sheinbaum to exclude King Felipe VI from the list of guests to her inauguration, which took place on October 1, for not having responded to a letter from the outgoing president, Andrés López Obrador, in which he was urged to apologize for the Spanish conquest. The Government of Spain described this decision as “unacceptable” and announced that it would not participate in the inauguration “at any level.” The event, however, was attended by members of Sumar, a minority partner in the coalition government, in a personal capacity. As a result, the Mexican ambassador to Spain, Quirino Ordaz, was summoned to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to submit a formal complaint for this reason and the Spanish ambassador to Mexico, Juan Duarte, personally went to the Mexican Foreign Ministry to deliver a verbal note of protest. For his part, Albares declared around the same time in New York, after meeting with the Secretary of Foreign Affairs, Alicia Bárcena, that Spain wants to maintain “the best relations with a sister nation like Mexico”, but, “of course, we do not accept any representation at any other level than that of head of state at the inauguration”. “I want to be very clear: let no one have any doubt, with Mexico or with any other country in the world, as long as I am Minister of Foreign Affairs, Spain's foreign policy will always, always defend our institutions, starting with the highest, the Head of State”, he concluded. The King represents Spain at the inaugurations of Ibero-American presidents, a task that Don Felipe has been assuming since 1996 when he was still Prince of Asturias. Specifically, the Monarch was at the inauguration of Sheinbaum's predecessor, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, in 2018. In March 2019, López Obrador revealed that on the first day of that month he had sent a letter to King Felipe VI in which he proposed that the two countries create a roadmap so that "the Kingdom of Spain publicly and officially expresses its recognition of the grievances caused" during the conquest of Mexico against the "indigenous peoples." The Government "firmly" rejected the content of the letter. That was the first in a series of diplomatic clashes with López Obrador in relation to the memory of the conquest and the colonial period. Three years later, in February 2022, López Obrador again attacked Spain, proposing to put relations between the two countries “on hold” and launching accusations of “plundering” by Spain. Days later, José Manuel Albares travelled to Mexico, where he declared that the two countries have a “privileged relationship” and claimed that he was unaware of the meaning of the “pause” in relations announced by the president.
