Eduardo González
King Felipe VI will attend the presidential handover ceremony to the president-elect of the Republic of Peru, Keiko Fujimori, next week, on Tuesday, July 28, as announced this Friday by the Royal Household and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
The monarch will be accompanied by the Secretary of State for International Cooperation, Eva Granados. On July 27, the King will meet with the current president of Peru, José María Balcázar, and the following day, he will attend the swearing-in ceremony and the assumption of supreme power by the new president.
The King usually represents Spain at the inaugurations of Latin American presidents, a task that King Felipe has been undertaking since 1996 when he was still Prince of Asturias. With Fujimori’s inauguration, Felipe VI will have attended the inauguration of a Latin American leader 23 times since ascending the throne.
Specifically, the monarch attended the 2016 inauguration of Portugal’s Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa; the 2018 inauguration of Andrés Manuel López Obrador as president of Mexico; the 2019 inauguration of Panama’s Laurentino Cortizo; the 2020 inaugurations of Uruguay’s Luis Lacalle Pou and Bolivia’s Luis Arce; the 2021 inaugurations of Ecuador’s Guillermo Lasso Mendoza and Peru’s Pedro Castillo; and the 2022 inaugurations of Honduras’ Xiomara Castro, Chile’s Gabriel Boric, Costa Rica’s Rodrigo Chaves, and Colombia’s Gustavo Petro. In 2023, the elections will be held by Brazilian Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Paraguayan Santiago Peña Palacios, and Argentine Javier Milei; in 2024, by Guatemalan President César Bernardo Arévalo de León, Panamanian President José Raúl Mulino Quintero, and the re-elected presidents Nayib Bukele of El Salvador and Luis Abinader of the Dominican Republic; in 2025, by Uruguayan President Yamandú Orsi; and in 2026, by Portuguese President António José Seguro, Chilean President José Antonio Kast, and Costa Rican President Laura Fernández Delgado.
Keiko Fujimori, candidate for the right-wing Popular Force party and daughter of former president Alberto Fujimori (1990-2000), won the presidential election on June 7 in the second round, defeating the leftist candidate Roberto Sánchez of the Together for Peru coalition. Between 1994 and 2000, she served as First Lady of Peru, alongside her father, following the dismissal of her mother, Susana Higuchi. She is considered one of the most influential and powerful people in her country.
Following Fujimori’s victory, the Peruvian Ministry of Foreign Affairs dismissed the current Peruvian ambassador to Spain, Luis Iberico, who will remain in his post until July 28, coinciding with the presidential transition. The decision to appoint the new ambassador will be made by the incoming government.
