The President of Honduras, Xiomara Castro, and the President of the Government of Spain, Pedro Sánchez, this Friday before the meeting they held in Tegucigalpa (Honduras). ORLANDO SIERRA (AFP)
It had been 23 years since a Spanish president had visited Honduras, a country in turmoil since the 2009 coup that ousted Manuel Zelaya.
For seven months, his movement has returned to power after an electoral victory of his wife, Xiomara Castro.
With his visit this Friday to Tegucigalpa, the Honduran capital, Pedro Sánchez culminates a Latin American tour that has an economic component but also a clear political gesture: supporting the new wave of the Latin American left, of which the Colombian Gustavo Petro, whom he visited Wednesday is the big news.
But Castro is also a clear exponent.
Sánchez, who since last July, when he announced taxes on large energy companies and banks in the debate on the state of the nation, has made a clear turn to the left,
Thus, it reinforces its international progressive profile with this trip in which it approaches the positions of Jose Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, claimed by the Honduran president in her speech against the Spanish president, and moves away from other more centrist lines in Latin American politics.
At the meeting with Sánchez was not only Castro but also Celaya, in a clear gesture of the ousted man's return to power.
Throughout the trip, Sánchez has vindicated the progressive policy of wealth redistribution promoted by the new wave of Latin American leftist presidents and could deepen if Lula wins the Brazilian elections on October 2.
Castro said that Zapatero always supported Celaya in the face of the 2009 coup, "which brought a narco-dictatorship for 12 years that has left thousands dead and a country in ruins that we are trying to rebuild in seven months, for which we appreciate the commitment of President Sánchez in the search for development and social peace in Honduras, said Castro.
The president is very opposed to the harshest regimes such as Venezuela or Nicaragua but embraces the new wave of the Latin American democratic left —with Chile and Colombia as great references— and offers Spain as a “bridge to Europe” from Latin America.
"We want to achieve a fair economic recovery in the face of the uncertainty generated by Putin's war," he summed up.
Sánchez has also taken advantage of the fact that Castro is the only president of Latin America to claim himself as a "feminist politician" - in Colombia he also applauded Petro for making a parity government - and to boast of Spain as a "world reference" in gender policies after the approval this Thursday in Congress of the law of the
only yes is yes
.
"Spanish society has always been at the forefront, with great advances that have come from socialist governments," Sánchez stressed.
“We were pioneers with the equality law, with the gender violence law, with the same-sex marriage law, and now the yes is yes.
The path is to be a world reference in terms of gender equality and rights”.
For Sánchez, the key to progressive governments in Europe and Latin America is to protect the working middle classes and fight against inequality, but at the same time advancing rights with laws such as the
only yes is yes.
The president returns to Spain with an intense agenda to start the political course with a counteroffensive in which he will multiply his presence to turn the polls around and is already preparing the Budgets to try to approve them with his partners and thus show the stability of a majority that It has suffered many crises, but on Thursday it showed a strength much higher than expected in Congress.
Sánchez will also be much harder on Feijoo to try to stop the effect of euphoria on the right and demoralization on the left that the change of leadership in the PP and especially his victory in Andalusia produced.