Sheinbaum hopes her meeting with the King will allow them to “smooth over differences and achieve something more”

Eduardo González King Felipe VI will be received by the President of Mexico, Claudia Sheinbaum, during his upcoming trip to the North American country, as confirmed by the Royal Household, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the Mexican President herself. According to a statement issued this Friday by the Ministry, the King will travel to Mexico City and Guadalajara on June 25, 26, and 27, accompanied by the Minister of Foreign Affairs, European Union and Cooperation, José Manuel Albares, and the Minister of Education, Vocational Training and Sports, Milagros Tolón. The trip will begin in Mexico City, where he will meet with Claudia Sheinbaum, and will continue in Guadalajara, Jalisco, where the King will attend the World Cup match between the Spanish and Uruguayan national teams. “This trip is part of a broader context of strengthening bilateral relations between both countries, which share the common space of the Ibero-American Community of Nations, and reinforces the close ties and affinity that unite both peoples,” the Foreign Ministry stated in a press release. For its part, the Royal Household limited itself this Friday to announcing, in its weekly agenda, that “King Felipe will meet on Thursday, June 25, with the President of the United Mexican States” at the National Palace in Mexico City, at the invitation of Sheinbaum. “This trip is part of a broader context of strengthening bilateral relations between both countries,” it added. In her last morning press conference (“mañanera”), held this past Thursday, June 18, Claudia Sheinbaum clarified that the King will visit the capital for “a very short time.” “He could have gone directly to Jalisco, but, well, he is the Head of State of Spain and we are receiving him,” she acknowledged. Likewise, the President assured that, during their meeting, they will discuss “the indigenous peoples, the importance of these peoples in Mexico throughout history, from before the arrival of the Spanish to now, and the value they represent for the country, among other things.” She also insisted that relations between Spain and Mexico “had not been broken,” but “this meeting” is an opportunity “to exchange opinions, smooth over differences, and achieve something more.” The diplomatic crisis and its solution On May 18, King Felipe VI officially announced that he had accepted Claudia Sheinbaum’s invitation to attend the World Cup. 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 Mexico to attend the opening of the 2026 FIFA World Cup. "With the exception of a few 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 mayor recently declared, referring to the controversial visit to Mexico by the president of the Community of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso. On April 29, Foreign Minister 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.

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