First was an official statement from the Office of the President with harsh criticism of the Spanish Minister of Transport who stated that Javier Milei “ingested substances.” But now the Minister of the Interior, Guillermo Francosdirectly questioned the official Spain and he even hinted that he should resign: “If I were the President, I would ask him to resign.“.
The Minister of Transport of Spain, Oscar Puente, was the first to spark the controversy. “I have seen Milei on TV, and as I was hearing him, do you remember? The thing about… When he came out, I don’t know in what state and prior to ingesting or after ingesting what substances, but he came out say that about, that which he said, a few days before… I said: ‘It is impossible for him to win the elections, it is impossible for a guy… Today he dug his grave! Well no’“, he stated and had a first official response from the Milei government.
But this Saturday, Francos went through it harder: “It seems outrageous to me. I heard this kind of stand-up that this man did and he seems irresponsible to me. “He cannot expose a government of a country that is important to Argentina because of its traditions, because of the number of descendants of Spaniards who live in our country, because of the help that Argentina has given to Spain for so long.”
“A lack of respect of such magnitude from a member of President (Pedro) Sánchez’s cabinet seems really unusual to me,” Francos attacked.
But he went further and suggested that he should leave the Spanish government: “I don’t want to get involved in the Spanish government, but if I were the president, I would ask him to resign. It seems to me that it is an offensive thing against the president of a country that is a brother since many years”.
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Oscar Puente, from the PSOE, spoke about the Argentine president in a round table where social networks and politics were discussed.
“President Milei is a democratic president of the Argentine Republic and the Argentine Republic is a country of immigrants from Spain that gave shelter to the Spanish and helped Spain in times when Spain was bad,” said Francos in dialogue with “Very early Saturday” on the radio Miter.
And he concluded: “There are a lot of Spanish companies here that have invested in Argentina. Giving a quality response to a person without quality sometimes costs a lot.
Also this Saturday, President Milei himself, who in two weeks will travel to Spain to meet with Santiago Abascal, the deputy and president of the far-right party VOX, replied to Abascal’s defense of him.
“We are facing a new attempt at victimization by this Government. It seems that they have taken a liking to whining and are scandalized that the Office of the President of Argentina has had to remember the alleged corruption in the environment of the President of the Government and has done so in response to some very serious insults by a Sánchez minister saying that the president of a foreign country, brother to Spain like Argentina, must take some type of substance,” Abascal said.
“I think the response of the president of Argentina is very moderate,” Abascal concluded.
On Friday night, from the Casa Rosada they published a statement against the Spanish minister and the Sánchez government: “Pedro Sánchez’s government has more important problems to deal with, such as the corruption accusations that fall against his wife, a matter which even led him to evaluate his resignation. For the good of the Kingdom of Spain, we hope that justice will act quickly to clarify such a corruption scandal that directly affects the stability of your Nation and, consequently, relations with our country.”
Pedro Sánchez’s main opponent in Spain also called for the minister’s resignation
Alberto Núñez Feijóopresident of the Popular Party (PP), the main opposition in Spain, asked this Saturday that the Minister of Transport, Óscar Puente, “resign or be dismissed” for having caused “a political crisis with a sister country” like Argentina.
“They boast of international relevance, and they have just created a political crisis with a brother country like the Republic of Argentina. They ask that they not be insulted, and they insult everyone,” Feijóo denounced before the nearly 3,000 militants and sympathizers who gathered. They attended the event, according to the organization.
According to Feijóo, the socialists “are a factory of hoaxes” and “they move like no one else in the quagmire.” “It is regrettable that relations with a brother country are tense in this way. Spain deserves another level,” remarked the leader of the PP, for whom Puente today “should resign or be dismissed.”
The response of the Government of Spain to Milei’s statement
The Spanish Government responded to Milei with a brief six-line statement that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs published on its website this Saturday, in which it “flatly rejects” the letter from President Milei’s Office.
“The Government of Spain categorically rejects the unfounded terms of the statement issued by the Office of the President of the Argentine Republic, which do not correspond to the relations of two brother countries and peoples,” states statement 020 that the Spanish Foreign Ministry uploaded to their website this Saturday morning.
In an official note bearing the logo of the Office of the President of the Argentine Republic, the government of Javier Milei had stressed on Friday night that Pedro Sánchez’s administration has more important problems that it must deal with, “such as the accusations of corruption that fall on his wife, an issue that even led him to evaluate his resignation.”
