A cold greeting and a combative speech
The 30th Ibero-American Summit of heads of state and government brought Spain's prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, and Argentina's president, Javier Milei, to the same venue in Madrid. The two men met with only a minimal, frosty greeting as King Felipe VI, the Spanish prime minister and the Ibero-American secretary-general received arriving leaders at the Gallery of the Royal Collections, a museum devoted to Spanish history and to the tastes of the dynasties that ruled the country. When Milei took the floor at the morning plenary, he left the Spanish head of government out of the list of authorities he acknowledged before reading his address, then likened socialism to fascism.[S1][S2]
In Milei's account, the two doctrines share a hostility to free markets, a preference for state intervention, nationalizations, economic regulation and control of the media, which he said they use to spread propaganda and indoctrination. He also argued that both concentrate individual decisions in the hands of a minority and turn economic dependence into a tool of political domination. Sánchez, who leads the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party, was among those listening. Milei attended no other summit activity, and Argentina later distanced itself from three of the four principal points of the closing declaration.[S1][S2]
Sánchez: presidents are there to unite
Speaking at a press conference after the final declaration, alongside Ibero-American secretary-general Andrés Allamand of Chile and Honduran president Nasry Asfura, who will host the next summit in 2028, Sánchez said presidents exist to bring countries together rather than to confront states or governments. He stressed that respect for truth and for the manner of doing politics matters greatly even when ideas differ, and he insisted that leaders in multilateral settings should work to unite their countries.[S1][S2][S3]
Asked about Milei's remarks, Sánchez described them as a reflection of the range of opinions and positions now present in the Ibero-American system, and said he would leave the matter there. He thanked every head of state and government for attending, naming the Argentine president specifically and noting that traveling to Spain and taking part in the summit requires effort. He also played down the absences of Mexico's Claudia Sheinbaum and Brazil's Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, arguing that focusing on who stayed away diminishes the commitment of those who came.[S1][S2][S3]
Old grievances and a parallel agenda
The confrontation follows Milei's previous visit to Spain two weeks earlier, when he called Sánchez a disgraceful dictator at an event with businesspeople and described the Spanish Socialists as corrupt. This summit produced their first face-to-face encounter since those comments. Milei skipped the opening ceremony at the Teatro Real and the dinner hosted by the Spanish monarchs at the Royal Palace, but he did meet Santiago Abascal, the leader of Vox, and on Thursday he posed in another part of Madrid with Isabel Díaz Ayuso, the regional president of the Community of Madrid and a leading figure in the Popular Party, who had urged him to return for the summit.[S1][S2][S3]
Of the 22 countries in the Ibero-American community, ten sent their heads of state or government, three were represented by vice presidents and the remainder by foreign ministers. Sánchez used his own address to call for dialogue over imposition, cooperation over division and peace over violence, warning against the temptation to take refuge in differences and accept an ever more divided world.[S1][S3]
