Despite having insisted time and time again that Javier Milei’s trip to Spain was at the State’s expense because it was an official trip in his capacity as President, the national government had informed the Spanish Foreign Ministry that the president’s stay between May 17 and 19 It would be “a private visit”.
This is what he revealed an official letter that the Embassy of Madrid had sent to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Spainon April 30: “The President of the Argentine Republic, Mr. Javier Gerardo Milei, will be in Spain between May 17 and 19, on a private visit,” says the text published in the newspaper El País.
The statement in the letter contradicts the defense that the national government made of itself regarding the high state expenses required by Milei’s trip to Madrid to promote candidacies of the far-right party VOX, publicly disqualify President Pedro Sánchez and his wife, present his book denounced for false data and meeting with second-line businessmen without obtaining investments for Argentina.
This last fact was, precisely, the argument by which the Casa Rosada had defended the use of the public treasury for a trip that, it was now known, had been conceived as “private” from the beginning.
In the letter sent through diplomatic channels to the Spanish Foreign Ministry, the government of La Libertad Avanza (LLA) reported that the President would travel “accompanied by the Secretary General of the Presidency,” his sister Karina Milei, on the official plane and that days later he would give more details of both the delegation and the schedules and activities.
Then it was known that The trip would not include any meeting with members of the government or the Spanish crown.and it was confirmed that the only meetings that the president would have would be with his friend and leader of VOX, Santiago Abascal.
Even so, the Casa Rosada undertook a fierce defense of the indefensible. Spokesman Manuel Adorni came out to say that the trip included “a meeting with the main Spanish businessmen”and that this was an official activity.
At this morning’s press conference, Adorni insisted on the same thing: he made the trip to Spain in his capacity as Head of State. “When the President has made trips in his personal capacity since December 10, we have paid for it with our own money and he has met his corresponding expenses. When the trip is made in the capacity of President of the Argentine Nation and the trip has that destination, it is paid for by the national State. This is how it was with these last trips, not only the one to Spain”, he emphasized.
The spokesperson stated that “when I have (the precision of) the expenses, I will make them known” and then questioned the journalist who asked him the question.
“I understand that it is not of much interest to a Spanish journalist. In any case, it is an issue for the (Argentine) public coffers,” he said sarcastically, but the letter published by the Spanish newspaper shows that, at least initially, the idea was not that the millionaire expenses of Milei’s party trip would be financed. with tax money.
