Alberto Núñez Feijóo does not give up. He wants to visit the Spanish troops deployed abroad, and specifically his objective is to visit the more than 600 soldiers installed in Latvia, in a reinforced NATO mission after Russia's invasion of Ukraine, which has made this mission in one of the most numerous of those maintained by the Government outside of Spain.
After a first attempt in February of this year, which the Ministry of Defense ruled out justifying the refusal in some maneuvers that NATO was going to carry out at the base where the Spanish forces are located, the PP returns to the charge and has requested by letter to Margarita Robles that you have a date for your trip.
The letter is signed by the Deputy Secretary for Institutional Policy, Esteban González Pons, responsible for Defense Policy, and in it he stresses that Feijóo "continues to be interested in paying his respects to the Spanish military who participate in the defense of freedom, security and democracy in Europe", and in response to the words of the minister, who when she denied her trip in February stressed that the PP leader "always has the doors open" to find out about any unity, is now asking for a date for her trip.
And it is that, explains Pons in the letter to Margarita Robles, "weeks ago the director of the cabinet of President Feijóo addressed his requesting a new date from the Ministry and he has not yet received any response or information due to this delay in the reply". Hence, she asks the minister for a date to "be able to resolve this issue as soon as possible" and "work together to organize the visit."
In the letter that Alberto Núñez Feijóo's chief of staff sent to the director of the minister's cabinet a few weeks ago, she reminded him of the telephone conversations they had held in February, where he informed him that Feijóo's displacement to the base military in Latvia would be in accordance with the dates indicated by the Defense.
The leadership of the PP maintains that the Armed Forces do not belong to the Government but to all Spaniards, "so it does not seem reasonable to prevent the leader of the opposition from going simply to recognize and thank the work of the troops of our country since he partisan would be to ban it."
The NATO mission in Latvia, known as Reinforced Advanced Presence, aims to maintain deterrence against any aggression against our Baltic Allies, through a defensive deployment, and responds to the existing commitment within the Alliance to help to allied countries.
Before the war in Ukraine, Spain had 350 soldiers at the Latvian base, and just a few days after the invasion it decided to increase it to 600 troops, as part of the response that the European Union and NATO decided to give Russia, to reaffirm Western international support for Ukraine. NATO already has four multinational tactical groups in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland respectively.
