<h6><strong>Eduardo González</strong></h6> <h4><strong>King Felipe VI has been in Montevideo since Friday to attend the inauguration of the President-elect, Yamandú Orsi, with whom he has already held a bilateral meeting accompanied by the Second Vice President of the Government and Minister of Labor and Social Economy, Yolanda Díaz.</strong></h4> Don Felipe has arrived in Uruguay together with the State Secretary for Ibero-America and the Caribbean and Spanish in the World, Susana Sumelzo. On Saturday the group will be joined by the Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares, who will attend the Ceremony of the Transmission of the Presidential Command with the Monarch. After his arrival, Don Felipe held a meeting with Orsi at the Radisson Hotel in Montevideo. The Monarch was accompanied by Yolanda Díaz, the head of the House of His Majesty the King, Camilo Vullarino; the Spanish ambassador in Uruguay, Javier Salido Ortiz; and the diplomatic advisor of the House of His Majesty the King, Carmen Castiella. On behalf of the president-elect, Mario Lubetkin, incoming Minister of Foreign Affairs, and the ambassador of Uruguay in Spain, Ana Teresa Ayala Barrios, were present. The King's first day in Montevideo will be completed with a meeting with the outgoing president of Uruguay, Luis Lacalle Pou, at the Executive Tower, in Montevideo, which Yolanda Díaz will also attend. “It is an honour to meet with the new president of Uruguay, Yamandú Orsi,” said Yolanda Díaz on the social network Bluesky, more than a month after leaving X due to the “politically motivated” use of this network by its owner, Elon Musk. “The Uruguayan and Spanish horizon of hope is shared: more rights against reactionaries. We will continue walking together,” she added. For his part, Albares will take advantage of his visit to the Uruguayan capital to hold various meetings with the new representatives of the country's institutions, as well as several bilateral meetings with his counterparts in the region, with whom he plans to coincide during the Ceremony of Commitment of Constitutional Honor, according to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in a statement. Yamandú Orsi, candidate of the Frente Amplio, won the presidential elections last November against the official candidate, Álvaro Delgado, of the National Party, which makes him the third left-wing president in the history of Uruguay. He will succeed Luis Lacalle Pou in office and will serve as President for five years, until March 1, 2030. After his electoral victory, the new president was congratulated by the Spanish Government, both by the president, Pedro Sánchez, who expressed his desire to work “together” to promote “the fight against climate change and social justice”, and by Yolanda Díaz, who stressed that “the Frente Amplio will once again make Uruguay a benchmark in Latin America and the world”. 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. This is the eighteenth participation of Felipe VI in the inauguration of an Ibero-American president since he became King. Specifically, the Monarch was at the inauguration of Andrés Manuel López Obrador as president of Mexico in 2018; in 2019, in that of Panamanian Laurentino Cortizo; in 2020, in those of Uruguayan Luis Lacalle Pou and Bolivian Luis Arce; in 2021, in those of Ecuadorian Guillermo Lasso Mendoza and Peruvian Pedro Castillo; in 2022, in those of Honduran Xiomara Castro, Chilean Gabriel Boric, Costa Rican Rodrigo Chaves and Colombian Gustavo Petro; in 2023, in those of Brazilian Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Paraguayan Santiago Peña Palacios and Argentine Javier Milei; and in 2024, in those of Guatemalan President César Bernardo Arévalo de León; Panamanian President José Raúl Mulino Quintero; and the re-elected Nayib Bukele, from El Salvador, and Luis Abinader, from the Dominican Republic.
