The Diplomat
The People’s Party and the Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares, were involved in a new spat in the Senate on Tuesday, in which the main opposition party denounced that the Government’s foreign policy “does not exist and has been replaced by an agenda of the president and his gang” and the head of diplomacy responded that of the PP Government “only one thing is remembered: the unjust war in Iraq”.
During an interpellation in the Senate, the PP’s Foreign Affairs spokesperson, Pilar Rojo, stated that “Spanish foreign action cannot be more erratic, full of changes of direction and coups, without a perceived strategy that gives it meaning and coherence”, and denounced the “personalist and opaque attitude” of the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, “more typical of authoritarian regimes such as the Russian or Venezuelan”.
According to Rojo, decisions such as the U-turn regarding the Sahara and the recognition of Palestine as a State “are not the result of meticulous preparation”, but are the result of the will of Sánchez, who does not think “about the general interest” but about his “personal and parliamentary interests”. “There is no project for the country and, therefore, foreign policy, as such, does not exist and has been replaced by an agenda of the president and his gang”, she added.
The senator also regretted that the Government does not inform the PP about its foreign policy decisions. “They never call us and they do not want to agree on anything with us, only when the situation is pressing, they expect us to save them”, she added. An example of this, she added, is the meeting this Thursday between Sánchez and the leader of the PP, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, to talk about defence and Ukraine, “wrapping up this contact in a shameful round of twenty-minute conversations” with all the parties, which represents “a lack of respect for the most voted party in Spain”.
In his response, Albares said that “Spain deserves a state opposition and you are only the opposition to try to wear down the Government” and he assured that “Spain has presence, voice and international weight and that is thanks to a coherent foreign policy with its own identity” and a Government that sits “at all the tables where the future of Europe is designed”.
“Of the years in which you governed, Spain only remembers one thing: that you got us into an unjust war, the Iraq war, against the feelings of the vast majority of all Spaniards, that is your only contribution to Spain’s foreign policy”, he said.
