The Government justifies Armengol’s official visit to Azerbaijan and announces “further trips to Armenia”

Eduardo González The Government has stated that the official visit of the Speaker of the Congress, Francina Armengol, to Azerbaijan, during which she laid a wreath at a monument commemorating the military occupation of the Armenian region of Nagorno-Karabakh, is part of Spain's interest in "supporting" "peace and stability" in the region and will be followed by "further trips to Armenia." Armengol made an official visit to Azerbaijan between January 23 and 24, which received extensive coverage from local media and included meetings with Prime Minister Ali Asadov and parliamentary representatives. On the first day of her visit, the Speaker of the Congress laid a wreath at the Victory Monument in Baku, which commemorates the defeat of Armenia and the Azerbaijani army's takeover of the Nagorno-Karabakh region in 2023. As a result, both the People's Party (PP) and Euskal Herria Bildu submitted non-binding motions requesting explanations from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs regarding the visit, but both motions were rejected on February 10 due to votes from the Socialist Party (PSOE) and Sumar. Therefore, the two parties submitted several written parliamentary questions on the same subject, which were published in the Official Gazette of the Spanish Parliament (BOCG) on February 16. In its two parliamentary questions, the People's Party (PP) denounced that the conflict had resulted "in the expulsion of more than 100,000 Armenian civilians," which was described as "ethnic cleansing" by the European Parliament in October 2023 and "by various international human rights organizations." The PP asked the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to clarify whether it had endorsed Armengol's visit and the laying of the wreath. During a debate in Congress on February 10, Pablo Hispán, of the PP, denounced that the wreath-laying ceremony paid homage to "a monument commemorating ethnic cleansing, all with the approval of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs." He also recalled that several PP and PSOE deputies are on a blacklist and are banned from entering Azerbaijan, and described the withdrawal of the two non-binding resolutions as “pure authoritarian hypocrisy.” For his part, Jon Iñarritu denounced in the same plenary session the “shameful trip of the third-highest authority in the State to a dictatorial state like Azerbaijan,” in which he “glorified the ethnic cleansing of the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh,” and therefore demanded the adoption of “some measure to apologize to the Armenians for this affront.” In response to both questions, registered on March 10 and published this past Monday, March 23, by the BOCG, the Government asserts that “definitive peace and stability between Armenia and Azerbaijan is an objective of Spanish foreign policy.” “Spain supports the agreements reached between both countries last August 2025 as a decisive step towards the complete normalization of relations between the two states, and has also expressed its willingness to support their implementation,” it continued. “Both Spain and the European Union are adapting their relations with Armenia and Azerbaijan to this new context created by the peace process,” it affirmed. In this regard, “the visit of the Speaker of the Congress to Azerbaijan, preceded by bilateral political consultations at the level of State Secretary with Armenia (in Madrid) and Azerbaijan (in Baku), and which will be followed by further trips to Armenia, is part of this effort to strengthen relations, identify opportunities, and support the normalization process decided upon by the governments of both countries,” it concluded.

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