The King will attend the inaugurations of the presidents of Portugal and Chile next week

Eduardo González King Felipe VI will attend the inaugurations of the new presidents of Portugal, António José Seguro, and Chile, José Antonio Kast, on March 9 and 11, respectively, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced in a statement on Thursday, March 5. On Monday, the monarch will attend the inauguration of the socialist António José Seguro, former deputy prime minister under António Guterres (current UN Secretary-General), who will succeed the conservative Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa. Rebelo de Sousa will step down as President of the Portuguese Republic after ten years in office, and King Felipe VI received him in Madrid on February 20, during his last official visit to Spain before leaving office. Seguro won a resounding victory in the second round of the presidential elections on February 8 against the far-right candidate André Ventura. This is the most resounding victory achieved to date by a Portuguese president, surpassing the 70 percent of the vote won by fellow socialist Mário Soares in the 1991 elections. On Wednesday, the King, accompanied by Foreign Minister José Manuel Albares, will attend the inauguration of Chile's new president, the far-right José Antonio Kast, who defeated the communist Jeannette Jara in the second round of the presidential elections on December 14. This is the worst result for the left since the restoration of democracy in 1990 and marks the first time a far-right candidate has won the presidency in an election. In 1988, Kast voted "Yes" in the referendum on the continuation of César Augusto Pinochet's dictatorial regime. Since 2006, no president has been replaced in an election by a candidate from their own party. In this case, the outgoing president is the leftist Gabriel Boric. The King's tour will conclude between Thursday and Friday in Bolivia, where he will meet with President Rodrigo Paz. The Monarch was unable to attend Paz's inauguration in November 2025, which was attended by the Speaker of the Congress, Francina Armengol, accompanied by the Secretary of State for Ibero-America and the Caribbean and Spanish in the World, Susana Sumelzo. The King represents Spain at the inaugurations of Ibero-American presidents, a task that King Felipe VI has been performing since 1996 when he was still Prince of Asturias. With the inaugurations of Seguro in Portugal and Kast in Chile, Felipe VI will have attended the inauguration of an Ibero-American leader on 19 occasions since becoming King. Specifically, the Monarch attended the inauguration of Andrés Manuel López Obrador as President of Mexico in 2018; that of Laurentino Cortizo in Panama in 2019; and those of Luis Lacalle Pou in Uruguay and Luis Arce in Bolivia in 2020. 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; in 2024, in those of the president of Guatemala, César Bernardo Arévalo de León; the president of Panama, José Raúl Mulino Quintero; and the re-elected Nayib Bukele, of El Salvador, and Luis Abinader, of the Dominican Republic; and in 2025, to that of the president of Uruguay, Yamandú Orsi.

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