Mexico’s president on Thursday described his decision to “pause” relations with Spain as a protest over the behavior of Spanish energy companies in Mexico.
President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said Thursday the pause “is not breaking off relations” with Spain, describing it as “nothing but a respectful, fraternal protest for the abuses and wrongs committed against the people of Mexico.”
López Obrador had said Wednesday he was taking a time-out in relations with Spain, but didn’t clarify what that meant. He has repeatedly accused Spanish companies of taking unfair advantage of private-sector openings to sign crooked contracts to build power plants in Mexico.
López Obrador had previously asked Spain to apologize for the brutality of the 1521 conquest of Mexico and centuries of colonial rule. Spain never did, and some have accused López Obrador of using the five-century-old issue to distract attention.
López Obrador's announcement of the diplomatic pause Wednesday came at the end of a diatribe against Spanish energy companies that he said engaged in “robbery” and treated Mexico like “a conquered land.”
“Right now the relationship is not good,” López Obrador said Wednesday. “I would like to put it on pause, until we can normalize it. That I think would be in the best interest of Mexicans and Spaniards.”
“Let’s give ourselves a little time, a pause,” he said. “Maybe relations will be reestablished when the administration changes.”
Spain’s Foreign Minister José Manuel Albares downplayed the Mexican president’s remarks on Wednesday, saying they were made “in an informal context, in answer to a journalist’s question, and so do not constitute an official position or statement.”
“You would have to ask President López Obrador what he meant by this,” Albares said.
Spanish energy companies like Repsol and Iberdrola took advantage of openings in the last decade that allowed private and foreign companies to build electrical power plants in Mexico, a sector once dominated by Mexico’s state-owned utility.
López Obrador is seeking to reverse those openings because he said the state-owned company was put at a disadvantage with private firms. That proposed change has drawn concern about protecting the Spanish firms’ investments.
In a 2020 letter, López Obrador wrote, “The Catholic Church, the Spanish monarchy and the Mexican government should make a public apology for the offensive atrocities that Indigenous people suffered.”
The letter came as Mexico marked the 500th anniversary of the 1519-1521 conquest, which resulted in the death of a large part of the country’s pre-Hispanic population.
In 2019, López Obrador asked Spain for an apology for the conquest.
Spain’s foreign minister at the time, Josep Borrell said his country “will not issue these apologies that have been requested.”
