The Spanish ambassador in Buenos Aires was recalled to Madrid yesterday after Argentina’s president Javier Milei described the wife of Spain’s prime minister as ‘corrupt’. Today Spain’s foreign ministry summoned Argentina’s ambassador in Madrid to demand an apology.
Albares declared that unless Milei apologised, Spain’s government would ‘take any measures deemed necessary to defend our sovereignty’
Milei, who was speaking at a rally in Madrid, also mocked Spain’s prime minister Pedro Sánchez for taking a five-day break last month in order to decide if he wanted to continue as prime minister. Even so, it seems something of an exaggeration for Spain’s foreign minister, José Manuel Albares, to describe Milei’s words as ‘a frontal attack on our democracy, on our institutions and on Spain.’
Sánchez is very sensitive to criticism of his wife. His resignation threat last month was triggered by a judge’s decision to investigate allegations that she was involved in influence peddling. Sánchez insists that she’s done nothing wrong – that this is just part of the right-wing’s constant campaign of vilification.
On that occasion, after several days of deep reflection, Sánchez emerged to inform the nation that he had decided that he would after all continue to be prime minister – indeed ‘with renewed energy, if possible’. He fulminated against the ‘degradation of public life’ and then threatened – rather ominously some felt – to tighten control of the media. He also alluded darkly to ‘a global reactionary movement’ against which, he suggested, he was now going to lead the fight.
Shortly afterwards, perhaps taking his cue from Sánchez’s words, Óscar Puente, Spain’s transport minister, suggested that Milei had ‘ingested substances’ during Argentina’s election campaign. There are ‘very bad people’, Puente said, ‘who… have risen to the top. Milei, for example, Trump.’ In response Milei repudiated Puente’s ‘slanders and insults’ and suggested that Sánchez should attend to ‘the accusations of corruption against his wife, a matter that has even led him to consider resigning’.
But it wasn’t until yesterday, when Milei referred to that matter for a second time that Spain decided to recall the ambassador. Albares also declared that unless Milei apologised, Spain’s government would ‘take any measures deemed necessary to defend our sovereignty’.
Milei’s insults, Spain’s foreign minister stressed, came after he had been ‘in good faith’, allowed to land at the Torrejón de Ardoz air base in Madrid and provided with the security appropriate for a head of state, despite the fact that he was not going to meet with either Sánchez or King Felipe on his first visit to Spain after taking office. ‘A foreign leader does not come to the capital of another country to insult its institutions,’ Albares said.
He chose not to specify what deadline he is giving the Argentine president to apologise nor what measures he will take if Milei refuses to do so. Spokesmen for Milei meanwhile have indicated that Argentina’s president has not the slightest intention of apologising.
The rally Milei was speaking at was organised by Vox, Spain’s most right-wing party, ahead of next month’s elections to the European Union parliament. Marie Le Pen also addressed the rally, with Italy’s Giorgia Meloni and Hungary’s Viktor Orbán joining via video link.
With polls suggesting that right-wing parties are set to make important gains in June’s EU elections, Sánchez has repeatedly positioned himself as a key player in the fight against any such surge. Since it was the best way to keep a right-wing bloc from governing Spain, his pact with Catalan separatists to keep him in power has, he has suggested, done the EU a favour.
The centre-left El País, one of Spain’s leading national dailies, says that Milei’s words yesterday are typical of ‘one of the worst contributions of the extreme right to public life: the normalisation of insults and the demonisation of the political adversary’. But, before criticising others, Spain’s socialists and their allies in the media would do well to put their own house in order. The Financial Times pointed out recently that Spain’s left-wingers ‘are not afraid of dishing it out themselves’. And as Alberto Feijóo, leader of the right-wing Partido Popular, has suggested, Milei isn’t acting any worse than Sánchez’s government when it comes to its own enemies.
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