The Government of Spain has considered "incomprehensible" the criticisms made this Friday by the President of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, against King Felipe VI and Spanish companies, which have been "categorically" rejected.
The President of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, pointed out this Friday that "the pause continues" in relations with Spain because he considered that there is no "attitude of respect" when the Spanish authorities do not respond to his claims.
“The pause continues because there is no respectful attitude on their part. I sent a respectful letter to the Head of State, to the King of Spain, and he did not even care to answer me," the president claimed during his morning press conference from the National Palace.
In a statement released tonight by the Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, European Union and Cooperation, "the Government of Spain categorically rejects the statements of the President of the United Mexican States regarding His Majesty the King, Spanish companies and political sectors of Spain".
"These statements are incomprehensible after a successful Binational Commission that has offered so many concrete results," considers Foreign Affairs.
According to the statement, "Spain will always favor the strengthening of fraternal, human, cultural, economic and educational ties between our two sister countries."
Last February, the Mexican president asked for a "pause" in relations with Spain after he demanded an apology for the abuses committed during the Conquest of present-day Mexico. This request by López Obrador caused friction between the two countries.
"When we ask you to start a new phase in the relations between Mexico and Spain, we consider a gesture of humility important, offering forgiveness, apologies for the extermination, the repression, the murders of the original peoples, and they say that we have to thank them for coming to civilize ourselves," said the Mexican president.
Until before that request, the Mexican governments had maintained a perspective of Mexican history that emphasized miscegenation with the Spanish, while López Obrador defends a direct relationship that links current Mexico with pre-Hispanic cultures.
"We are not going to ask them to return everything they took, just to acknowledge the abuses, the massacres, that the native peoples were repressed and that we, after independence, also committed those excesses," he said.
However, López Obrador reiterated that this "is not a break, it is a pause", while noting that all Spaniards "are welcome".
"For the Spanish, Mexico is their home. No Spanish company is prevented from coming to do legal business in Mexico, what we don't want is for them to see us as a land of conquest. What we don't want is for them to want to treat us of a colonial country. That's all," he said.
He also reiterated that the Spanish people "are extraordinary, first class" and assured that Spain's progressive democratic movements "are exceptional people, very intelligent, very supportive."
He also asked that Spanish companies "do not come to promote and foment corruption in Mexico, that they do not take the presidents of their companies' employees, that they respect the dignity of the Mexican people and nation."
López Obrador's statements come just one day after the Mexico-Spain Binational Commission was held in Mexico, with the participation of the Mexican Secretary of Foreign Relations, Marcelo Ebrard, and the Spanish Minister José Manuel Albares Bueno, in which both They underlined the relaunch of bilateral relations.
