King Felipe VI’s message that in the colonization of America “there was a lot of abuse” and “ethical controversies” by the Spanish conquerors was not at all improvised: it had and has the support of the Government and the PP, “which was brought up to date”, as confirmed by all the parties involved. In the Royal House they classify the “recovery of the institutional relationship” lost with Mexico as a “State operation.” Felipe VI wants Mexico to attend the XXX Ibero-American Summit in Madrid in November and has made direct efforts with the leaders of Chile, Argentina and other countries in the area to recover the usefulness of these meetings, after the failure of last year’s event in Ecuador. The PP of Alberto Núñez Feijóo reaffirms that “they never criticize His Majesty” and not about those words, which were questioned by the popular Isabel Díaz Ayuso.
Last Monday the King attended the exhibition Half the world. Women in indigenous Mexico at the National Archaeological Museum, organized by the Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Culture of the Mexican government. It seemed like another institutional and protocol act, although it was not on their announced agenda. It was recorded upon arrival, touring the premises and during an apparently informal chat with the Mexican ambassador. The Royal Family then included the video with that conversation on its X profile and other social networks and some passages quickly became important news due to its butterfly effect, due to the recent controversies between the Mexican governments of Andrés Manuel López Obrador and Claudia Sheinbaum and the Spanish monarchy.
In one of those not at all casual moments, Felipe VI comments to Ambassador Quirino Ordaz: “There are things that, when we study them, we know them, you say: well, in our criteria today, with our values, obviously they cannot make us feel proud, but we must know them and in their proper context, not with excessive moral presentism, but with an objective and rigorous analysis.” And then he adds that “lessons must be learned” about how power is exercised in each historical moment and recognizes that in that process promoted by the Catholic Monarchs to protect indigenous peoples, “a lot of abuse” could also have occurred.
The Madrid president, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, was quick to distance herself from that intervention and in an interview in Okdiario she replied that the relevant abuses had not been on the part of the Spanish conquerors: “Abuses, those that were already committed against the native population itself by the Aztec and Mayan populations, who understood the sacrifices as part of the rituals.” Ayuso once again went a little further than the national president of the PP, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, had initially gone, who that Tuesday in an interview on esRadio claimed his “pride” in the “Spanish legacy” in America and specified that “doing now an examination in the 21st century of the things that happened in the 15th century is nonsense.”
Feijóo’s team explains that the popular leader was not critical of the monarch at any time and limited himself to asking that his presentation be understood in its entire context. And they add a dig at some components of the PSOE and Sumar coalition executive: “In this PP we never criticize His Majesty, unlike others in the Government.” Other sources from the PP leadership suggest that if Feijóo outlined that day an attempt to differentiate himself from the King, it was because the interview was on esRadio, by Federico Jiménez Losantos, who was not at all pleased with the strategy of the monarch and La Moncloa, in line with the increasingly distant positions with the Royal House of Vox, the ultra party of Santiago Abascal.
In Ayuso’s cabinet they develop that the Madrid president only expressed what she has pointed out other times, “that Hispanidad is one of the axes of her mandate” and wanted to make it clear “that we must listen to everything the King said, not just a part, in a conversation, not a statement.” And they add: “The president speaks proudly of the work of the Spanish in America in general and in Mexico in particular and has highlighted the King’s citation of the Indies laws of Isabel la Católica.”
In the Royal House they minimize Ayuso’s unique position over Feijóo’s and highlight that the dialogue with the national leadership of the PP is good, both at the highest level, between the King himself and the popular president, and with other actors. The head of the Royal House, Camilo Villarino, and the executive secretary of the International area of the PP, Ildefonso Castro, are colleagues in diplomatic careers and have known and dealt with each other for years. Now, with this case of Mexico, those contacts have also occurred, as occurred when Feijóo himself called Villarino to inform him of the tweet he published on the occasion of the declassification of papers from the February 23 coup on the need for the return to Spain of the emeritus king Juan Carlos I.
“The Head of State has informed the Government and the PP. They have spoken with the PP, they are aware, not exactly of what the King was going to say but of what he was going to do,” indicate sources from the Royal House. At the PP leadership they confirm: “We didn’t know what he was going to say.” And they insist on supporting everything the monarch does on the merits of the matter: “We are always with his majesty, unlike others.”
In the Government, the Royal House and some PP sources agree in relating this first step in the reconciliation sought by Felipe VI with the Mexican authorities, which they have thanked, as a “matter of State” that transcends the bilateral, the invitation by Sheinbaum to the monarch to visit Mexico during the next World Cup in June and which has an underlying objective: to restore the success of the Ibero-American summits, which are increasingly inconsequential. Only five heads of state attended last year’s event in Ecuador. In the PP they remember that one of those who did not show up was Pedro Sánchez. This year’s event will be on November 4 and 5 in Madrid and the Government and the Royal House intend for it to recover a certain splendor. Felipe VI took advantage of his recent visit to Chile 10 days ago for the inauguration of the new president, José Antonio Kast, to attend a restricted lunch with several Latin American leaders, among whom was the Argentine Javier Milei and others, to invite them to go to Madrid in the fall. In the Royal House they only dare to venture as a result of these efforts that “there was quite a bit of receptivity.”
