Armando G. Tejeda
Correspondent
Newspaper La Jornada
Thursday December 15, 2022, p. 16
Madrid. Former Mexican President Felipe Calderón, who ruled the country in the six-year term from 2006 to 2012, is preparing his landing in Madrid, Spain, where he will live for at least the next six months and for which he already has a special two-year visa. To obtain the papers, he requested the intervention and help of former Spanish President José María Aznar, who opened the doors for him as an academic at the Atlantic Institute of Government (IAG) foundation. Calderón joins the other two former presidents who also have their residence in Spain, the PRI members Enrique Peña Nieto and Carlos Salinas de Gortari.
According to the Spanish newspaper El País, Calderón has already approved his residence and work as a highly qualified professional
, which is valid for at least two years, which can be extended for five more, which is when you could start the procedures for your nationality. As former President Salinas (1988-94) recently did, who appealed to his Sephardic roots to apply for Spanish nationality. While Peña Nieto used another way to obtain his residence in Spain, which was to process what is known as the golden visa, which is granted to foreigners who make a real estate investment in the country of more than half a million euros (10 million 500 thousand pesos).
Calderón’s case is different. He began procedures from the Spanish consulate in Mexico, as required by immigration legislation, and for which the intervention of his friend and ideological ally José María Aznar was necessary, who opened the doors of one of the foundations he directs, the IAG, with which will also share an educational council with two other Mexicans: former president Ernesto Zedillo, who in recent years has become close to the right and the Spanish and Ibero-American extreme right, and with the businessman from Monterrey Alfonso Romo, with whom the foundation maintains close suspenders. In fact, the Mexican businessman was the gateway for the Aznar foundation to strengthen ties with two universities in Monterrey with which they have signed several agreements, the Universidad Metropolitana de Monterrey and the Universidad de Monterrey.
According to the Spanish newspaper, a close collaborator of Calderón confirmed both the granting of the visa by Aznar and his foundation, as well as the former president’s intentions to move his residence to Madrid. He explained it this way in a text sent to the Spanish medium: Recently, the Instituto Atlántico de Gobierno, through its president, José María Aznar, has invited him to collaborate in academic projects aimed at examining the political and economic situation in Latin America. For this purpose, he has recently requested and obtained a work visa for highly qualified professionals granted by the Spanish government, to carry out such activities, with the respective temporary residence authorization. […] Calderón, who had donated his former president’s pension to the Fundación de Niños con Cáncer Aquí Nadie se Rinde, has lived off his academic and professional work since his term as president of the Republic ended in 2012.
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Calderón’s last visit to Madrid was at the end of last October, when he participated in a forum organized by the International Foundation for Freedom (FIL), chaired by Mario Vargas Llosa, and with which the IAG also has close ties, in which now it will work.
Calderón carries out professional tasks in the International Automobile Federation (FIA), which organizes Formula 1 races in the world and has its headquarters in Paris. For the FIA he carries out work as president of the Environment and Sustainability Commission with Arab countries, especially the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia.
Former President Salinas obtained Spanish nationality in mid-2021, thanks to his Sephardic ancestors. Although the former president resides most of the time in London and travels sporadically to Mexico, the Spanish passport guarantees him freedom of movement throughout the European Union and could make it difficult to extradite him in the event that criminal proceedings are opened against him.
Peña Nieto has lived in Madrid since October 2020, when he was granted a golden visa for the purchase of a luxury property. He recently renewed his residency documents for five more years and has not traveled to Mexico for several months. It was not even for the wedding of one of his children, which coincided with the opening of judicial investigations against him.
