The Diplomat
Técnicas Reunidas has been awarded a €300 million contract in Mexico for the development of two new 600 megawatt (MW) natural gas combined cycle plants that will use high-efficiency gas turbines, according to the Spanish National Securities Market Commission (CNMV).
Just a week ago, the Spanish engineering company won another contract in Mexico for two more combined cycle plants, this time together with TSK and Japan’s Mitsubishi Power, to be installed in the municipalities of Valladolid and Merida.
This time, its partners will be Siemens Energy, which will provide the turbine technology, as well as TSK, and the sites where these two plants will be installed will be San Luis Rio Colorado and González Ortega. The revenues for Técnicas Reunidas alone will be 300 million euros.
The award comes at a time when the controversy created by the latest statements made by the President of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, advocating a “pause” in relations with Spain, and lashing out at Spanish companies that he accused of plundering the country, is still fresh.
Yesterday, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares, affirmed that relations with Mexico are good, and rather than pausing them, as López Obrador has proposed, what needs to be done is to “speed them up”.
As his department did in a statement last Thursday, the Spanish minister insisted on his categorical rejection of the Mexican president’s “unjustified words”. And when expressly asked whether the government is considering recalling its ambassador to Mexico for consultations, Albares assured that no other measure is being “considered” as “relations are good”, although he made it clear to López Obrador that “the government will defend its citizens and companies and the good name of Spain before anyone and in any situation”, reports Europa Press.
“At the moment these relations are not asking for a pause, they are asking governments to accompany what has been accelerating year by year for 15 or 20 years,” he said, highlighting the fact that there are 7,000 Spanish companies in Mexico, which generate 300,000 direct jobs and a million indirect jobs.
There is also an increasing presence of Mexican companies in Spain, with 25,000 million euros in investment, he added, stressing that there are more than 175,000 Spaniards living in Mexico and nearly 30,000 Mexicans living in Spanish territory.
“Both because of our common past, with our common language and cultural ties, and because of our present and our future, what we have to do is to speed up our relations”, said Albares, who added that, in his opinion, having spoken to the Mexican Foreign Minister, Marcelo Ebrard, “we are all in agreement on moving in this direction”.
The Mexican president, who has maintained a tense relationship with Spain since he took office, declared himself in favour of a “pause” on Wednesday, only to clarify the following day that, by this, he did not mean breaking off relations.
“I did not speak of breaking off relations,” he said, in favour of “calming the relationship” so that Spain would realise that it could not “plunder Mexico with impunity”. “They should even offer an apology. They haven’t done so, it doesn’t matter, but we are going to enter a new stage, slowly”, he said.
AMLO has been highly critical of Spain’s colonial legacy, demanding on several occasions that Spain apologise for it. In this regard, in March 2019 he sent a letter to King Felipe VI demanding that “the Spanish State admit its historical responsibility” for the offences committed during the conquest and “offer the apologies or political reparations that are appropriate”.
