Mexico Wants Spain to Apologise for Conquering the Aztecs

When Claudia Sheinbaum becomes Mexico’s first female president later today, Felipe VI, the King of Spain, will not be present. He has, very pointedly, not been invited to the swearing-in ceremony because he hasn’t apologised for Spain’s invasion and conquest of the Aztec empire 500 years ago.

This diplomatic stand-off began in 2019 when Andrés Manuel López Obrador, then president of Mexico, wrote to King Felipe inviting him to express his regret. Having described the conquest as ‘tremendously violent, painful and unjustifiable’, López Obrador said, ‘Mexico would like the Spanish state to recognise its historical responsibility for these offences and to offer the appropriate apologies or political reparations.’

Felipe didn’t reply to that letter. By 2022 López Obrador was suggesting that Spain needed to learn to respect Mexico rather than regarding it as an ex-colony. Then last Thursday at his daily press conference the out-going president read out the four-page letter he sent five years ago and claimed that Felipe’s failure to reply showed high-handed arrogance.

His successor sings from the same hymn sheet. Shortly after becoming president-elect of Mexico in July, Sheinbaum declared that ‘Spain should ask for forgiveness.’ Perhaps she has in mind something along the lines of Pope Francis’ apology in 2021 for the atrocities committed during the conquest and evangelisation of the Americas. She may well also be aware that there is a precedent: just nine years ago Spain recognised that the expulsion of the Jews in 1492 was a cruel mistake. Now one of Sheinbaum’s ministers has proposed holding a ‘ceremony of atonement’ to normalise relations with Spain.

Felipe, first as prince and then as King, has in the past attended the swearing-in of Mexican presidents. On this occasion he has left it to Pedro Sánchez, Spain’s left-wing prime minister, to comment on Mexico’s decision not to invite him. Regretting that the relations between two ‘progressive’ governments have deteriorated to this point, Sánchez confirmed that due to ‘the unacceptable and inexplicable exclusion [of King Felipe]… there will be no representatives of the Spanish government at the ceremony.’

‘Spain,’ Sánchez explained, ‘regards Mexico as a brother country… We feel enormous frustration… that we cannot normalise our relations.’ Hinting that Mexico’s politicians are using a confected confrontation with Spain as a distraction from their country’s real problems, he recalled with gratitude that Mexico welcomed hundreds of thousands of Spaniards fleeing the Spanish Civil War and Franco’s repression: ‘I feel closer to those principles and values.’

Although there will be no representatives of the Spanish government, several of Spain’s anti-monarchical, left-wing politicians will attend the swearing-in ceremony. One suggested that if Spain is represented abroad by the head of state, then it should be a democratically elected head of state. Another described Felipe as ‘arrogant’ for not apologising to Mexico ‘for the excesses’ committed during the Spanish conquest and said that the king is now ‘paying a price’ for his ‘enormous diplomatic clumsiness’.

In fact the Spanish monarchy did once make an apology – of sorts. In 1990 during a visit to Mexico, Juan Carlos I, Felipe’s father, regretted the abuses that occurred during the conquest whilst pointing out that Spain’s monarchs sought from the very beginning to defend the dignity of the indigenous people. ‘Of course,’ Juan Carlos explained, ‘the prudence and equanimity of the monarchs was unfortunately often disregarded by… venal officials.’

Juan Carlos’ reluctance to shoulder the blame for events that took place half a millennium ago is shared by many Spaniards. They are alert to the ‘emotional fraudulence’ of professing guilt for something that happened 20 generations ago. Besides, many point out gleefully, López Obrador’s Spanish surnames suggest that he may himself be descended from a conquistador. The Partido Popular, Spain’s main right-wing opposition party, which rarely endorses anything the government does, has on this occasion enthusiastically supported Sánchez’s decision to lodge a formal protest with the Mexican authorities, calling the decision not to invite Felipe ‘an unacceptable provocation’.

Nor has it gone unnoticed in Spain that, while King Felipe was dropped from the guest list because he hasn’t apologised for what Hernán Cortés and his men did hundreds of years ago, Vladimir Putin, personally responsible for a far more recent invasion, was invited.