Sheinbaum says it is “likely” that she will have a bilateral meeting with Felipe VI during her trip to Mexico

Eduardo González Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum stated this Tuesday that a bilateral meeting with King Felipe VI is “likely” to take place during the Monarch's visit to the North American country to attend a match of the national soccer team in the World Cup. “Yes, it is likely, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs is still discussing the matter with the Spanish Foreign Ministry and with the representatives of the Spanish Head of State, and I believe we can inform you tomorrow or the day after,” the president declared during her morning press conference (the “Mañaneras”) at the National Palace. On May 18, Felipe VI officially announced that he had accepted Claudia Sheinbaum's invitation to travel to Mexico and attend the match between Spain and Uruguay, which will be played on June 26 in Guadalajara, in the state of Jalisco. Sheinbaum's invitation letter, which arrived at the Zarzuela Palace on February 24 and was announced in March by the president herself during one of her daily press conferences, was received "with pleasure" by the Royal Household, which considered it an example of the "fraternal relationship" between the two countries. The World Cup is being jointly hosted by Mexico, the United States, and Canada. The meeting between Claudia Sheinbaum and King Felipe VI could help definitively end the diplomatic crisis that erupted between Mexico and Spain as a result of the president's decision to exclude the monarch from the guest list for her inauguration in October 2024. This exclusion stemmed from his failure to respond to a letter from his predecessor, Andrés Manuel 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." The situation began to change on October 31, 2025, when Foreign Minister José Manuel Albares recalled the “pain and injustice inflicted upon Indigenous peoples,” which “is also part of our shared history and we cannot deny or forget it.” Those words, which were discreetly praised by Sheinbaum, outraged the People's Party (PP), which demanded Albares's resignation “if he does not retract his statement immediately.” The next step occurred in mid-March, when the King acknowledged—during a visit to an exhibition accompanied by the Mexican ambassador, Quirino Ordaz—that there had been “much abuse” by the Spanish during the colonial period. Pedro Sánchez fully endorsed the Monarch's words, while the PP leader, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, simply expressed his “pride in the Spanish legacy.” The following day, Claudia Sheinbaum praised the “King’s gesture” and, around the same time, confirmed that King Felipe VI had been invited to visit her country to attend the opening of the 2026 FIFA World Cup. “With the exception of some who still defend Hernán Cortés (…), the vast majority of the Spanish people are recognizing that there was a period of abuses and that they failed to civilize the uncivilized,” the Mexican president recently declared, referring to the controversial visit to her country by the president of the Community of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso. On April 29, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares, delivered an invitation from King Felipe VI to Claudia Sheinbaum to attend the Ibero-American Summit in Madrid, as part of a tour of Latin America and the Caribbean that included Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, and Mexico. The Mexican president recently visited Spain to participate in the IV Meeting in Defense of Democracy and the Global Progressive Mobilization event, both held in Barcelona on April 18. On that occasion, she held a bilateral meeting with the Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez. That was Sheinbaum's first visit to Spain since the diplomatic crisis. The First Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Economy, Trade and Business, Carlos Cuerpo, met with Claudia Sheinbaum in Mexico in early June during an official visit to the North American country. This visit coincided with a new controversy between the Mexican government and the People's Party, this time over remarks made by Congresswoman Cayetana Álvarez de Toledo during an event at a Mexican university, in which she questioned the "national sovereignty" of a country plagued by "organized crime."

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