MADRID.- The diplomatic crisis between Spain and Argentina Javier Milei’s criticism of the president of the Spanish government and his wife deepened this Tuesday with Madrid’s announcement that it was definitively withdrawing its ambassador in Buenos Aires.
“I announce to you that we are withdrawing our ambassador in Buenos Aires”, who had already been called for consultations on Sunday, and that “she will remain definitively in Madrid”, announced the Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares, in a press conference after the council of ministers.
“Argentina will continue without an ambassador,” stressed Albares, who said that Milei’s accusations in Madrid against the wife of the president of the Spanish government, the socialist Pedro Sánchez, whom he called “corrupt,” represent a “unique case in the history of international relations”.
“There is no precedent for a head of state going to the capital of another country to insult its institutions and to make flagrant interference in internal affairs,” he noted.
Albares raised the tone against Argentina after Milei, after returning to his country from his visit to Spain, in which he did not meet with either Pedro Sánchez or the king, categorically ruled out, in an interview with the TN channel, making excuses , and will call the head of the Spanish government a “coward.”
“I’m not going to apologize under any circumstances,” Milei said. “I was the one attacked,” she said, recalling that Spanish government officials called him “xenophobic, racist, far-right (…) science denier, misogynist.”
The diplomatic clash broke out when Milei referred to Sánchez’s wife, Begoña Gómez, as a “corrupt woman” during a meeting in Madrid of far-right leaders organized by the Spanish party Vox.
A few hours later, Madrid summoned its ambassador for consultations and asked Milei for a rectification, a request that Pedro Sánchez reiterated on Monday, stating that “among governments, affections are free, but respect is inalienable.”
“We have no desire or interest in any escalation (…) but it is the government’s obligation to defend the dignity and sovereignty of Spanish institutions,” Albares stressed this Tuesday.
Milei, however, ruled out a break in relations on Monday. “That will never be broken,” she asserted.
Instead, the Argentine government considered that it was Sánchez who should apologize.
“I think there should be several apologies from the Spanish government for the things they have said about President Milei,” Interior Minister Guillermo Francos told the press.
Francos alluded to at least a couple of recent episodes. With Milei already in Madrid, on Friday, the number three in Sánchez’s government, Yolanda Díaz, accused him of sowing “hatred”, and earlier the Minister of Transport, Oscar Puente, suggested that he took drugs when giving his speeches.
Given the latter, the Argentine presidency reacted with a harsh statement in which it accused Sánchez of implementing “socialist policies that only bring poverty and death.”
Source: With information from AFP
