Albares travels to Mexico to close a stage of tensions and bilateral disagreements

The Spanish Foreign Minister, Jose Manuel Albares, right, with his Mexican counterpart, Marcelo Ebrard, on January 27 in Tegucigalpa.RR.

H.H.

The Spanish Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares, will travel to Mexico on Tuesday with the aim of normalizing diplomatic relations between the two countries, which have experienced a long period of tensions and disagreements since the coming to power of current President Andrés Manuel López Workshop.

The latest storm occurred on February 9, when the Mexican president announced "a pause" in relations with Spain, after accusing Spanish companies of looting his country.

The next day, he clarified that it was not a breakup, but only a "fraternal protest."

Albares travels to Mexico invited by his counterpart, Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard, although the trip obviously has the endorsement of the Mexican president, according to diplomatic sources.

The head of Spanish diplomacy plans to sign a series of bilateral agreements, such as the one that creates a political affairs subcommittee that guarantees a regular and fluid relationship that avoids misunderstandings;

or the one that advocates a feminist foreign policy, coinciding with the commemoration of Women's Day.

The main objective of Albares, according to the sources consulted, is to show that bilateral relations, of great intensity and extension at all levels, cannot be

and are mutually beneficial for both countries.

The minister plans to meet with Spanish businessmen in Mexico and with Mexican businessmen with interests in Spain.

Spanish sources emphasize that the 7,000 Spanish companies based in Mexico generate 300,000 direct jobs, with an accumulated investment of 70,000 million euros.

Although it has not yet reached that volume, Mexican investment in Spain has grown in recent years and already exceeds 25,000 million.

More than 20,000 Spaniards reside in Mexico (almost 150,000 counting those with dual nationality) and 30,000 Mexicans in Spain.

Albares will visit the Mexican Senate and will meet with the mayor of the capital, Claudia Sheinbaum, with whom he will renew the assignment contract for the Cultural Center of Spain in Mexico, dependent on Foreign Affairs.

He will also visit the Ateneo and the Colegio de México, two institutions that represent the reception that the Mexican government of the time gave to the Republican exile after the Civil War and the contribution that Spanish intellectuals made to the development of their host country, a sample of that the relations between the two peoples go beyond economic ties or the differences between their governments.

Albares is confident that this visit will serve to start a new stage and put an end to a period of coldness that was evidenced by the absence of Spanish authorities in the commemorative acts of the bicentennial of Mexico's independence, last September.

The distancing began in 2019, after López Obrador sent a letter to King Felipe VI in which he urged him to apologize for the excesses committed during the colonization, to which he never replied.

Subsequently, López Obrador has charged on numerous occasions against Spanish companies, which he accuses of having benefited from the corruption of previous Mexican governments.

The president accused Iberdrola of privileged information for having signed his predecessor in office, Felipe Calderón, and his former Secretary of Energy, Georgina Kessel.

Calderón defeated López Obrador by only half a point in the 2006 presidential elections, a victory that López Obrador branded fraudulent and that, to his annoyance, was immediately recognized by the then head of the Spanish government, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero.

Despite the Mexican president's outbursts, Albares has tried to maintain a cordial relationship with his counterpart Marcelo Ebrard, with whom he met on January 27 in Tegucigalpa, at the inauguration of the new Honduran president, Xiomara Castro.

It was there that the Spanish minister informed him that the Spanish government had given the placet to the new Mexican ambassador in Madrid, Quirino Ordaz.

The process had been pending for four months and was especially controversial because the new ambassador had been a former governor of the State of Sinaola with the Institutional Republican Party (PRI), currently in opposition.

After the appointment was unblocked, a complete normalization of bilateral relations was expected, but López Obrador's statements, speaking of a "pause", left them on hold.

Until this Tuesday.

If the war in Ukraine does not force a change of plans, Albares plans to travel from Mexico to Santiago de Chile to accompany Felipe VI to the inauguration of the new Chilean president, Gabriel Boric.

The second vice president, Yolanda Díaz, and the Minister for Equality, Irene Montero, will also be part of the Spanish delegation.

Boric, politically closer to Podemos than to the PSOE, won last December, with 55.8% of the votes, the far-right José Antonio Kast.

This is the second time that Podemos ministers have accompanied the King to an inauguration in Latin America: in November 2020, the then Vice President Pablo Iglesias attended that of the Bolivian President, Luis Arce.

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