Ben Pawlowski
THE Spanish government will recall its ambassador from Argentina as a diplomatic spat between the two counties deepened following comments from hard-right President Javier Milei about Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez’s wife.
Speaking at a global conference of far-right leaders in Madrid in the run up to next month’s European elections, Milei told the crowd that Begoña Gomez, Sanchez’s wife, was ‘corrupt’.
“Even if he has a corrupt wife, he gets dirty and takes five days to think about it”, said the current Argentine president, making reference to the break Sanchez took from official duties earlier this month as he weighed up whether he wanted to carry on as PM after his wife was cited in court for alleged influence-peddling, which Sanchez has described as a smear from a far-right trade union.
Following Milei’s speech, which was attended in-person and virtually by Vox leader Santiago Abascal, France’s Marine Le Pen, Hungary’s Viktor Orban and Italy’s Giorgia Meloni, Spain’s foreign minister, Jose Manuel Albares, demanded an apology, revealing that he was recalling the Argentinian ambassador ‘indefinitely’.
He said: “We will take all appropriate measures in defence of our sovereignty and dignity. It is unacceptable that a sitting president, on a visit to Spain, insults Spain and the president of the government of Spain…a fact that breaks all diplomatic customs and the most elementary rules of coexistence between countries”.
The European Union’s foreign chief, Josep Borrell, tweeted that ‘attacks against family members of political leaders have no place in our culture’.
The diplomatic row between the two countries first erupted after the Spanish transport minister alleged that Milei had ingested ‘substances’ during last year’s presidential election which the far-right firebrand won with 55% of the vote.
Milei’s office released an official statement, accusing Sanchez of bringing ‘poverty and death’ to Spain with his ‘socialist policies’, adding that he has ‘more important problems to worry about, such as the accusations of corruption against his wife’.
Relations between Argentina and Spain had cooled significantly since Milei’s election thanks to the wide political differences between Spain’s socialist-led coalition and the Argentine President’s self-styled ‘anarcho-capitalist’, populist brand of governance.
Milei’s comments came at a conference of international far-right leaders described as a ‘great patriotic convention’, hosted by Vox in Madrid.
In his speech, Milei described socialism as the ‘cancer of humanity’ and ‘dark, black, satanic, disgusting, atrocious, carcinogenic’.
Speaking in Barcelona, PM Sanchez said: “Why have all these people chosen Spain as the place to meet? It’s no coincidence. They’ve chosen Spain because we, as a society – not as a government; as a society – represent everything that they hate and detest: feminism; social justice; dignified employment; a strong welfare state, and democracy”.
He added: “In democracy, as in life, forgiveness is far stronger than bitterness, coexistence is far stronger than confrontation, and union is far stronger than division”.
