The President of Argentina, Javier Milei, has not attended the opening ceremony of the XXX Ibero-American Summit, presided over by King Felipe VI at the Teatro Real in Madrid, despite having arrived with sufficient advance time in the Spanish capital to attend. Instead, he has delegated Argentina’s representation to the Foreign Minister, Pablo Quirno.
As the newspaper 'El Mundo' reported and various diplomatic sources confirmed to Europa Press, the Argentine Executive sent last Friday to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs a formal request to hold a meeting between Milei and the monarch.
"There has been no response" for now, the aforementioned sources have indicated, who acknowledge their discontent, even more so considering that Felipe VI is indeed holding bilateral meetings with other heads of state present at the gathering, such as those of Chile, Costa Rica, Guatemala, or Honduras.
The King’s agenda must be validated by the Government, so it would have been Moncloa, and not the House of the King, that would not have authorized that the first official meeting between the two ultimately take place on Spanish territory.
According to the consulted sources, Milei decided to go back to Madrid for this summit — after which it will be his seventh visit, on the previous 21st of October — because it was King Felipe VI himself who issued a formal invitation to him and conveyed on several occasions that he considered the presence of both the president and Argentina at the Ibero-American gathering to be very relevant.
The Argentine leader, one of the few officials in the region who has traveled in person to take part in the summit, has landed at the Torrejón de Ardoz air base at 16.10 hours, as it appeared in the schedule, with time, in principle, to be able to attend the opening ceremony.
Meanwhile, Milei is scheduled to meet this very night in Madrid with the leader of Vox, Santiago Abascal, with whom he was unable to see during his previous stay in Spain because Abascal was in pre-campaign outside the capital.
On Thursday morning, the Argentine president will attend the summit’s plenary session, where he will be received upon his arrival by the King, by the head of the Executive, Pedro Sánchez, and by the Ibero-American Secretary General (SEGIB), Andrés Allamand. In that setting, the long-awaited image of the greeting between Milei and Felipe VI should finally take place.
Clash with Sánchez and relationship with Felipe VI
On his last trip, Milei lashed out again, as he had done on other occasions, against Sánchez, whom he described as a "dictator", "corrupt", and "thief". In addition, he encouraged "to kick the socialists out" of power and trusted that the Spanish "do not commit suicide by voting socialist" in the elections of November 29.
As for Felipe VI, the Argentine leader emphasized that he maintains "an excellent relationship" with the King, whom he has seen in various inauguration ceremonies of presidents in the region, such as in Peru and Colombia, as well as during his own inauguration in December 2023, and expressed his desire to have the "possibility of visiting him here" on another of his stays in Spain. "This is not a question of will but of impossibility of schedules", he clarified.
Subsequently, sources from Zarzuela specified that Milei had conveyed "informally" his intention to see Felipe VI during that visit, but he was reminded that for that meeting to take place, he also had to meet with the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, something to which the Argentine leader has reiterated that he is not willing.