Claudia Sheinbaum stood in front of a cloud of cameras and microphones swirling at the doors of the Fira de Barcelona awaiting her arrival at the IV Meeting in Defense of Democracy. The president of Mexico highlighted the importance of the summit, said she was “happy” on her first visit to Europe during her term, and quoted Abraham Lincoln at the doors of the official event, conceived as a space to propose alternatives in the face of the challenges posed by the rise of the far right and Donald Trump’s attacks on the world order. “Democracy is the power of the people, by the people and for the people,” she stated this Saturday. Immediately after, journalists asked her if the diplomatic crisis with Spain is over. “There is no diplomatic crisis, there never has been. What is very important is to recognize the strength of the indigenous peoples for our homeland,” she assured.
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About half an hour later, around ten in the morning, the moment that had caused enormous expectation on both sides of the Atlantic in the days leading up to the summit took place, which brought together more than a dozen left-wing world leaders. The Spanish Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez, shook hands with the president and both posed smiling for the cameras. It is the first high-level meeting between the authorities of both countries in eight years, following the apology sent in 2019 by former president Andrés Manuel López Obrador, Sheinbaum’s predecessor and mentor, to the King of Spain for the abuses committed during the conquest.
The image represents a new step towards reconciliation after a long paralysis in the political relationship and a hard diplomatic process to normalize contacts. In the brief exchange between the two leaders, Sheinbaum made a quick gesture with her hands, indicating that they would talk later about the bilateral relationship. They are scheduled to hold a meeting on the sidelines of the summit this same Saturday, according to the itineraries shared by both governments.
Sheinbaum maintained the same discourse in her initial intervention during the summit in Barcelona. “I come on behalf of a people who are supportive even in adversity, deeply human, who resist individualism, who reject discrimination and refuse with dignity to look at the other with contempt,” she said. “I come from a people who recognize their origin in the great indigenous cultures, those that were silenced, enslaved, and plundered, but were never defeated, because there are memories that are not conquered and roots that are never uprooted.”
The Mexican president proposed adopting a joint declaration among the participating countries against a possible military intervention against Cuba, amid the energy blockade decreed by Trump and the pressure Washington has exerted on the island for three months. “May dialogue and peace prevail,” she requested. And she resumed a proposal she made at last year’s G-20 meeting: to allocate 10% of global military spending to a global reforestation program. “Instead of sowing war, let us sow peace, let us sow life,” she urged.
In the face of turbulence from armed conflicts and the crisis of the multilateral system, Sheinbaum defended the principles that have governed Mexico’s foreign policy for more than a century: “Respect for the self-determination of peoples, non-intervention, the peaceful resolution of disputes, rejection of the use of force, legal equality of states, respect for human rights, and the permanent struggle for peace,” she stated. “In a world wounded by war, by inequality, these democratic principles remain a contribution from Mexico to the peoples of the world, as a symbol of hope.”
“Democracy means raising love above hatred, cultivating generosity instead of greed, fraternity above war,” Sheinbaum commented, without directly referring to the foreign policy of the United States, with which it shares a border of more than 3,000 kilometers. “It means that life is not for sale, nor are the freedom and dignity of peoples,” the president added and called for respect for diversity and solidarity to build a political alternative from progressivism for the coming years.
The Mexican leader also offered that the next summit of progressive leaders, an initiative that emerged in 2024 on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly, be held in Mexico. Sánchez echoed the leader’s words and announced that the next edition of the meeting will be held on Mexican soil in 2027, in a new gesture of rapprochement between the two leaders.
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