Mexico mends ties with Spain in first presidential visit in eight years

By Aida Pelaez-Fernandez and Joan Faus

BARCELONA, April 18 (Reuters) - Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum and Spain's Pedro Sanchez met in Barcelona on Saturday after a summit of progressive leaders, signaling a rapprochement during the first presidential visit to the Mediterranean country in eight years.

The meeting took place during Sheinbaum's visit to Barcelona to attend the fourth "In defense of democracy" summit, a gathering of global leftist leaders to mobilize advocates of these movements against the far right.

Sheinbaum's trip marks a softening of previously strained ties and was the first visit by a Mexican president to Spain since the ruling Morena party came to power in 2018.

Relations deteriorated under her predecessor and mentor, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who in 2019 demanded an apology for abuses committed during Spain's colonial rule in Mexico, a request that was not met at the time.

"There has already been a rapprochement from both the Spanish president and the king himself, which we acknowledge," Sheinbaum told reporters as she left the event, noting that she still outlined Mexico's stance on the importance of acknowledging the abuses committed during the colonization of Latin America during her meeting with Sanchez.

She said she had invited Sanchez to attend the fifth edition of the summit, to be held in Mexico next year.

GREATER TIES

"I believe that President Sheinbaum's presence here is a very important and positive sign of a rapprochement between the two countries," Spain's economy minister, Carlos Cuerpo, told reporters at the summit, highlighting the importance of boosting trade and investment ties, particularly in the energy, infrastructure and financial sectors.

Sheinbaum, meanwhile, thanked Sanchez for the invitation and noted that "there is no diplomatic crisis (with Spain); there never has been one."

Her administration last month invited Spain's King Felipe VI to attend the World Cup opening ceremony that will take place in June, a thawing after she did not invite him to her inauguration ceremony last year.

Felipe VI last month acknowledged abuses in his country's colonial past, softening the prior declination from the monarch to apologize for colonial-era abuses.

Spain ruled one of the world’s largest empires between the 16th and 18th centuries, stretching across five continents, including much of Latin America, where colonial rule involved forced labor, land expropriation and violence against Indigenous peoples.