A simmering dispute between Spain and Mexico over the colonisation of the New World has erupted, triggering a war of words between the countries and involving the Spanish king, Felipe VI.
The spat came to light when it emerged that King Felipe had not been invited to the inauguration of Mexico’s president-elect, Claudia Sheinbaum, on October 1st.
In a statement, Sheinbaum said the decision not to invite the monarch was a reprisal for his refusal to apologise for abuses committed by Spain during its conquest and colonisation of Mexico. She said a letter her predecessor, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, had sent to the king in 2019 calling for acknowledgment of “grievances caused” by Spain and for “both countries to agree upon and draw up a shared, public and socialised narrative of their common history” had received no response.
Sheinbaum, who belongs to López Obrador’s left-wing Morena party, said the letter’s contents had been leaked to the Spanish media. In her statement, the president-elect made a new call for the two nations to seek a “renewed historical perspective”.
[ While Mexico’s democracy has been weakening, migration is keeping the US quietOpens in new window ]
The Spanish government has responded to the snub by taking the unusual step of not sending any of its representatives to the inauguration.
The Socialist prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, expressed “enormous sadness” at Mexico’s decision to shun the king, which, he suggested, had been taken “due to the political interests of some”.
“It’s a shame that the figure of Felipe VI should be involved in a controversy which does not reflect the feelings of Spanish society,” he said from New York, where he had been attending the UN summit. “Our aim is to defend our institutions and not accept exclusion [of the king].”
Sánchez’s centre-left Socialist Party is traditionally republican. But since the return to democracy in Spain in the later 1970s, in which Felipe’s father Juan Carlos I played a key role, the Socialists have defended the monarchy.
The prime minister did not discuss the Mexican demand for Spain to apologise, instead highlighting the close links between the two countries. Sánchez was in office when the 2019 letter was sent to King Felipe, almost exactly 500 years after the arrival in America of Hernán Cortés, the Spaniard who led the conquest of Mexico. The year 2021 marked the 500th anniversary of the fall of Tenochtitlán, the capital of the Aztec empire, at the hands of Cortés and his small army, who went on to slaughter many thousands of indigenous people.
Mexico’s demands for an apology for historical abuses have been roundly rejected by the Spanish right, many of whose politicians have cast the conquest of the New World as positive, pointing to the spread of the Catholic religion and Spanish values. In a rare show of unity with the left-wing government, the opposition conservative Popular Party (PP) said that not sending officials to the October 1st ceremony in Mexico was “logical”.
“One of the traits of populism is a lack of respect for our country,” said PP leader Alberto Núñez Feijóo.
While Sánchez’s Socialists have mainly sought to steer clear of debates about Spain’s colonial past, the far left has sympathised with Mexico’s president-elect.
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Ione Belarra, leader of the Podemos party, criticised Sánchez for what she called “unbearable monarchical sycophancy” and said it was a mistake for the government to boycott Sheinbaum’s inauguration ceremony.
“Our foreign relations with Mexico are absolutely strategic and looking after them, basing them on mutual respect and acknowledgment of history, is utterly crucial,” she said.
In an editorial, the centrist El País newspaper said Spain “should reflect on the way it recounts to itself and the world the facts of the Conquest, but it should not do so under duress”.
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