Mexico’s president-elect, Claudia Sheinbaum, explained on Wednesday that she had not invited King Felipe VI to her inauguration ceremony, which will take place on October 1, because the monarch had not responded to a letter from the current president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, apologizing for the conquest.
“Unfortunately, this letter received no direct response, as would have been consistent with best diplomatic practice in bilateral relations. Instead, part of the letter was leaked to the media,” Sheinbaum said in a statement.
The future president, who said she received a call “a few days ago” from the President of the Spanish Government, Pedro Sánchez, to talk “about this subject”, reacted in this way to the Spain announced on Tuesday that it would not send any representatives to his inauguration after excluding Felipe VI from the invitation to the event..
Sheinbaum maintained that he invited Sánchez only because the monarch had not responded to the letter that López Obrador sent him on March 1, 2019, asking him, in light of the celebration of 200 years of Mexican independence, “to publicly and officially express his recognition of the grievances caused” by the conquest.
The next Mexican leader criticized the lack of response, the leak of the letter and the fact that only the “Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a press release.”
“So far, this circumstance has not been clarified or responded to directly by the government of Mexico,” he said.
Despite the circumstances, Sheinbaum acknowledges that “Mexico and Spain share a strong relationship of friendship, with important economic, tourist and cultural ties,” recalling that the Latin American country “has been a supportive ally and a generous destination for many Spanish Republicans” during the Spanish Civil War.
But she insisted on the legitimacy of Mexico’s request that Spain publicly recognize the abuses committed against indigenous peoples during colonization, as she had already requested last July: “It is precisely for this reason that our relationship would benefit from a renewed historical perspective, in accordance with the development of our peoples and in which the full recognition of our identities is the axis of a respectful, solid and fruitful relationship.
The absence of a Spanish representative at Sheinbaum’s inauguration is a new moment of bilateral tension. In February 2022, López Obrador declared a “pause” in relations due to the abuses he denounced committed by Spanish companies in Mexico, particularly in the energy sector.
