Spain Skips Mexican President’s Inauguration Amid Colonial Spat

(Bloomberg) -- Relations between Mexico’s president-elect and Spain are off to a bad start over grievances about abuses against Indigenous peoples committed by Spanish conquistadors centuries ago.

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The diplomatic row deepened this week when Madrid said it wouldn’t send a representative to Claudia Sheinbaum’s Oct. 1 inauguration because Mexico had only invited Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez and not King Felipe VI to the ceremony.

In an open letter published Wednesday, Sheinbaum said the king didn’t get an invitation because he failed to respond to a 2019 call made by outgoing President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador for Spain to publicly recognize the atrocities that culminated in the fall of the Aztec civilization and the beginning of the Spanish domination of Mexico.

“The recognition of indigenous peoples is fundamental to continue advancing in the transformation of our public life, because that is where the root of Mexico’s cultural greatness lies,” Sheinbaum wrote in the letter, in which she mentioned Mexico’s “generous” welcome to Spaniards fleeing the country’s civil war in the 1930s. “Precisely for that, our relationship would benefit from a new historic perspective.”

Mexico is just the latest diplomatic problem faced by Sanchez in Latin America, a region traditionally seen as part of Spain’s main sphere of influence. Earlier this year, the Spanish prime minister summoned for consultations his ambassador to Buenos Aires after clashing with Argentina’s Javier Milei. More recently, he was accused of enabling Nicolas Maduro’s continued grip on power in Venezuela after giving asylum to the opposition leader who challenged him in a disputed July election.

In Mexico, Sheinbaum said she hopes both nations will find “new ways of understanding based on our sovereignty and mutual respect.” She received the support of Lopez Obrador, who in a news conference Wednesday again read the letter he had sent to the Spanish king five years ago.

Sanchez dismissed Mexico’s complaints, in line with a view accepted by many in the country that Spain has no need to apologize for its colonial past.

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