President Andrés Manuel López Obrador considered today that the Spanish government is free to have granted visas or residences to the former presidents of Mexico Carlos Salinas de Gortari, Felipe Calderón and Enrique Peña Nieto, and it is “understandable due to the treatment that their predecessors gave to companies from that nation such as Iberdrola and Repsol”.
“This is normal. Spanish companies were treated with privileges during the governments of Calderón, President Peña. With Calderón there were spoiled companies like Iberdrola, but there was another one before, the one that bought Pemex shares, Repsol, that did very juicy business during the Calderón government, from Fox, but fundamentally with Calderón ”, he stated.
In recent months it has emerged that three former presidents of Mexico have received residence permits in Spain.
A Enrique Pena Nieto who governed between 2012 and 2018, was granted a authorization to reside in Spain as an investor; a Carlos Salinas de Gortari president of Mexico between 1988 and 1994, was granted Spanish nationality, since Felipe Calderon holder of the federal Executive between 2006 and 2012, was granted a work visa “for highly qualified professionals”.
During his government, President López Obrador has expressed differences with Spain, a country to which he even asked to apologize for the Conquest process, and raised a pause in relations.
“The pause continues because there is no attitude of respect on their part. I sent a respectful letter to the Head of State, to the King of Spain, and he didn’t even bother to answer me. I sent letters to Pope Francis and he answered them all, we did not necessarily agree, now we agree more, but when we asked him to start a new stage in relations between Mexico and Spain, we considered important a gesture of humility offering not only Spain, the state Mexican, sorry, sorry for the extermination, the repression, the murders of the native peoples, they say that we have to thank them for coming to civilize us,” the president recalled today.
Spain and Mexico celebrated their XIII Binational Commission this week. At the meeting, Spanish authorities stressed that they will use the presidency of the European Union (EU) in the second half of 2023 to place “Latin America, and of course Mexico, at the heart of Europe.”
During the meeting, both governments agreed to relaunch “cooperation projects”, especially in Central America, and announced that Spain will be the guest of honor at the Guadalajara International Book Fair (FIL) in 2024, the most important Spanish-language literary event in the world.
