Sheinbaum values “the King’s gesture” in acknowledging “great abuse” during the colonial period

Eduardo González The President of Mexico, Claudia Sheinbaum, praised King Felipe VI’s “gesture” on Tuesday in acknowledging that there was “great abuse” by the Spanish during the colonial period, but did not specify whether this could translate into an invitation for the Monarch to visit her country. Meanwhile, the government of Pedro Sánchez “fully endorses” the Monarch’s words, and the leader of the People’s Party (PP), Alberto Núñez Feijóo, expressed his “pride in the Spanish legacy” in the Americas and pointed out that the King’s words were made “in a conversation, not in an official address.” “With the Catholic Monarchs, with their directives, the Laws of the Indies, the entire legislative process, there was a desire for protection,” but “then reality dictates that it isn't fulfilled as intended, and there is much abuse,” the King stated this Monday during a visit to the exhibition “Women in Indigenous Mexico,” organized by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation (AECID) at the National Archaeological Museum. He was accompanied by the Mexican Ambassador to Spain, Quirino Ordaz. “There are things that, when we study them, when we learn about them, tell us that, in our current view, with our values, they obviously cannot make us proud,” the King remarked. “We must understand them and their proper context, not with excessive moral presentism, but with an objective and rigorous analysis, and draw lessons,” he continued, as seen in a video of the visit shared by the Royal Household's account on the social network X. These words have been positively received, albeit moderately, by the President of Mexico, who in October 2024 excluded King Felipe VI from the guest list for her inauguration precisely because he had not responded to a letter from his predecessor, Andrés López Obrador, urging him to apologize for the Spanish conquest. The Spanish Government called this decision “unacceptable” and announced that it would not participate in the inauguration “at any level.” “It’s a gesture we acknowledge, because, unlike several years ago when even the letter sent by President López Obrador wasn’t recognized and relations actually cooled, now, first the King’s gesture of attending the exhibition of Indigenous women that Mexico sent to Spain, and then his statement, while not everything we would have liked, is a gesture of rapprochement from the King in the sense of acknowledging the excesses and exterminations that occurred during the arrival of the Spanish,” Sheinbaum declared this Tuesday during her daily morning press conference. “I believe we must recognize this and continue moving forward with the dialogue,” she continued. “There was a lot of criticism in Spain of the King for this statement, from what is called the Spanish right wing” and from “many Spaniards who still believe there was barbarism here, when in fact there were extraordinary civilizations here, which are the essence of who we Mexicans are,” she added. Regarding whether this gesture could lead to an invitation for Felipe VI to visit Mexico, Sheinbaum simply replied: "We'll see, but we must acknowledge the King's gesture." Elma Saiz For her part, the government spokesperson, Elma Saiz, stated at the press conference following the Council of Ministers meeting that the Executive Branch had indeed been informed of the King's remarks and fully endorsed "His Majesty Felipe VI's words." Regarding whether, with this gesture, the King had attempted to guarantee Sheinbaum's presence at the Ibero-American Summit in Madrid, scheduled for next November (given that she did not attend the previous summit in Ecuador and did not invite Felipe VI to her inauguration), Saiz declared that the government's objective is for "it to be a summit at the highest level and with the greatest possible participation of international leaders, given its importance and the current context." PP, Vox, Sumar For his part, the leader of the People's Party (PP), Alberto Núñez Feijóo, declared this Tuesday on 'esRadio' that he feels “proud of the Spanish legacy, the Hispanic legacy in Latin America” and warned that it is necessary to “contextualize” the King's words, which were made during “a conversation at an exhibition by the Head of State” and, therefore, not in an “institutional speech.” He also described as “absurd” judging from the 21st century “things that happened in the 15th century.” Likewise, the spokesperson for the PP in Congress, Ester Muñoz, declared that she “completely agrees with the King that there is no need to apologize for anything,” while the parliamentary spokesperson for Vox, Pepa Millán, simply stated, without mentioning the King, that “the Spanish enterprise in America was the greatest evangelizing and civilizing work in universal history.” For her part, Verónica Martínez Barbero, parliamentary spokesperson for the plurinational group Sumar (a junior partner in Pedro Sánchez's coalition government), declared on Tuesday that the King's words could help to "further unite" with the "brother" peoples of Latin America. Separately, Gerardo Pisarello, co-spokesperson for the Comuns (also part of Sumar) and First Secretary of the Congress's governing board, praised the monarch's gesture but cautioned that it came "late" and was "insufficient" because it did not include an "apology" as other countries have done regarding the "genocides" of their colonial past.

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