The president of the Community of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, offers statements to the media in the Fifth Avenue area, on September 27, 2021, in New York.Andrea Renault.
POOL / Europa Press
From the heights of a central Washington building, with the White House in the background, the president of the Community of Madrid, Isabel Diaz Ayuso, charged this Tuesday against the apologies that Pope Francis offered to Mexico.
The regional leader acknowledged on her first day of visit to the US capital that she is "surprised" that the pontiff, "a Catholic who speaks Spanish," asked forgiveness through a letter to the Mexican people for the "sins" committed by the Church. Catholic during the Spanish conquest.
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The Madrid president has defended the legacy of Spain, "which was precisely to bring Spanish, and through the missions, Catholicism and, therefore, civilization and freedom to the American continent," she said this morning on her third day of the trip. by the US after participating in a meeting with members of the Global Americans think tank.
On the occasion of the celebrations of 200 years of independence from Mexico, Pope Francis sent a letter to the president of the Episcopal Conference, Monsignor Rogelio Cabrera López, in which he invited them to “heal the wounds” of the past.
The "retrospective look necessarily includes a process of purification of memory, that is, to recognize the mistakes made in the past, which have been very painful," wrote the Pontiff.
While López Obrador thanked the Vatican and Pope Francis on Monday, the president of Madrid criticized the Mexican president for wanting to "undo the legacy of Spain" with his defense of indigenism, a struggle that he described as "the new communism" at the headquarters of the Hispanic Society in New York. On several occasions the president of Mexico has demanded that Spain publicly apologize for the abuses committed during the Spanish conquest more than five centuries ago.
One of the objectives of Díaz Ayuso's tour, in addition to strengthening political ties and promoting international investment in Madrid, is to defend Hispanism and the Spanish legacy on the American continent, when the revisionist movement in the United States is at its peak. In 2019, Washington joined the more than 130 cities and eight states in the country that changed the Columbus Day holiday to that of Indigenous Peoples. Consulted in New York about this modification, the president of the PP in Madrid said that it seemed "fatal" to her.
In Díaz Ayuso's busy and chaotic schedule - this Tuesday they modified the schedule of three of the four events scheduled in Washington - the Hispanic community occupies a relevant space.
One of the highest-profile meetings of the regional leader in Washington is scheduled for this Thursday, when she meets with congressmen members of the Hispanic Caucus on Capitol Hill.
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