Mexico’s Sheinbaum travels to Barcelona for ‘progressive’ confab, tension-easing talks with Spain

MEXICO CITY — Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum visits Spain this weekend on a twofold mission: to show solidarity with fellow “progressive” global leaders, and to ease simmering tensions with Mexico’s onetime colonial overseer.

But, before embarking on her first trip to Europe as president of Mexico, Sheinbaum sought to clarify what she called a misunderstanding.

“No, it’s not an anti-Trump meeting,” Sheinbaum told reporters here Thursday. “Not in the least.”

Still, a gathering of leftist heads of state favoring “peaceful solutions to conflicts,” in Sheinbaum’s words, sounds more like Pope Leo XIV denouncing a “zeal for war” than a pronouncement from the White House.

Slated to join Sheinbaum on Saturday at the Global Progressive Mobilization in Barcelona will be a constellation of left-wing leaders, including Brazil’s Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Colombia’s Gustavo Petro — both of whom have had run-ins with President Trump.

Hosting the confab will be Spain’s prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, who became an overnight antiwar champion to many when Madrid rebuffed a U.S. request to use Spanish bases in the war against Iran.

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez speaks during a panel discussion at the Munich Security Conference in Munich, Germany, on Feb. 14.

(Michael Probst / Associated Press)

“We respect President Trump,” Sheinbaum said before departing for Spain, displaying the “cool-headed,” pragmatic tone emblematic of her dealings with her bombastic U.S. counterpart. “He takes decisions that we don’t think are correct, but that’s another matter.”

Still, some observers in Mexico see a potentially treacherous path for Sheinbaum on her Spanish excursion.

The summit, they note, has the potential to become a Trump-bashing extravaganza. That could anger the White House as negotiators for the United States, Mexico and Canada open talks on a renewed free-trade accord — a linchpin of Mexico’s export-dependent economy.

The event comes at a “critical moment,” columnist Alejo Sánchez Cano wrote in Mexico’s El Financiero newspaper. “Any sign of ideological alignment that can be interpreted as a distancing from the [U.S.] agenda introduces a factor of risk.”

Less risky, it seems, is Sheinbaum’s conciliatory outreach to Spain, a country that has long enjoyed close cultural and economic ties to Mexico — home to the world’s largest Spanish-speaking population.

But since 2019, the two nations have plunged into a diplomatic deep-freeze so profound that Madrid sent no official representative to the 2024 inauguration marking Sheinbaum’s ascension as Mexico’s first woman president. Spanish officials say they were offended that King Felipe VI was not invited.

Behind the dispute are competing narratives about historical memory between Mexico and Spain, which ruled Mexico for three centuries, starting with the Spanish conquest in 1521.

During the run-up to the 500th anniversary of the conquest in 2021, then-Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador wrote what became an infamous letter: He demanded that the Spanish monarchy apologize for atrocities committed against Indigenous peoples during the subjugation of Mexico.

Madrid rejected the demand, calling it an affront. Contemporary standards, Spanish officials argued, cannot be used to judge a nation’s past.

Thus cracked open the ongoing bilateral fracture, though Mexico City and Madrid never broke off formal diplomatic ties. López Obrador called it a “pause” in relations.

The discord began at a time when bitterness about Spain’s colonial legacy had largely receded, and many Mexicans celebrate their mixed European and Indigenous heritage. Spanish restaurants, cafes and cultural centers abound throughout Mexico, a major tourist destination for Spaniards — just as many Mexicans visit Spain.

The tumult of 20th century Europe saw a new influx of Spaniard emigrants. Former Mexican President Lázaro Cardenas, who welcomed Spaniards escaping their nation’s fratricidal (1936-39) civil war, is still revered among many who trace their origins to Spain.

“My father and grandfather always spoke of their love for Mexico, of how proud they were to live in this country,” said Roberto López Díaz, 62, a Mexican businessman of Spanish heritage. “Fortunately, neither were here to see the decision of the government to freeze its relationship of friendship with Spain.”

Sheinbaum has trod carefully in her gradual effort to rebuild bilateral relations. She has often repeated her mentor’s assertion of colonial-era atrocities in Mexico.

“There were massacres against Indigenous communities, they were forced to have one religion,” Sheinbaum said last week. The idea that the Spanish arrived “to civilize is not one we should share.”

Informing her decision to visit Spain, she said, were recent conciliatory gestures from Spanish leaders. Some have endeavored to clarify past suggestions — still prevalent on the Spanish right — that Spain brought “civilization” to a “backward” Mexico.

José Manuel Albares, the Spanish foreign minister, recognized that Spanish colonial actions had caused “injustice and pain” for Indigenous Mexican communities.

Last month, King Felipe, while visiting a museum exhibition showcasing Mexican Indigenous women, conceded that the actions of Spanish conquistadors had featured “much abuse” and raised “ethical controversies.”

Still, Sheinbaum has stressed that her trip to Spain is not an official state visit. Nor is she scheduled to meet Felipe.

The bitter flap about historical memory appears to have had little if any impact on business, tourism and other links between Spain and Mexico. And today, the governments in Mexico City and Madrid share something else: Progressive, left-wing leadership at odds with the White House agenda of foreign conflicts and hostility toward immigration.

In both Spain and Mexico, commentators have mostly welcomed the prospect of an end to the mini-Cold War between two nations that have such deep ties.

Ultraconservative movements on both sides of the Atlantic have exploited the Mexican-Spanish dispute “to incite their discourses of hate,” the Spanish daily El País wrote in a recent editorial. “The two countries are today guided by related political models. … To reconstruct the ties is urgent in these times.”

Embedded in the wall of a weathered, colonial-era church in downtown Mexico City are the remains of Spain’s most infamous conquistador: Hernán Cortés, whose forces, by all accounts, waged a ruthless — some label it genocidal — campaign to overthrow the Aztec empire.

Cortés remains a reviled figure to many in Mexico. But visitors are always respectful, said Father Efraín Trejo Martínez, the pastor of the Church of Jesús Nazareno.

“It always struck me as strange when people criticize the past with the eyes of the present,” Trejo said. “The past is the past, and it had its own reality.”

Special correspondent Cecilia Sánchez Vidal contributed to this report.