Without the presence of the Spanish government, the Argentine embassy in Madrid celebrated May 25

“Unbreakable”. This is how Ambassador Roberto Bosch defined the bilateral relationship between Argentina and Spain during the toast he offered on Friday at his residence in Madrid to commemorate the national holiday of May 25.

Three days after Spain will definitively withdraw its ambassador in Buenos Aires -after the Casa Rosada did not apologize for the words of President Javier Milei about the wife of the head of government Pedro Sánchez, whom he called “corrupt”-, the expectation about the ambassador’s speech floated in the air.

The Argentine national anthem was sung and the strains of Spanish sounded. Bosch spoke next, who just a few days ago presented his credentials to King Felipe VI as representative of the Argentine Republic to the Kingdom of Spain.

“The very intense agenda that we maintain and follow from the embassy has to do with a unbreakable network of bilateral ties“, said.

“It is not just about maintaining close government relations, as in recent political consultations or in the recent conversation I was able to have with his majesty Felipe VI during the presentation of credentials less than ten days ago, but especially about the ties that our societies have been building for many years,” added the ambassador.

“In the economic-commercial sphere, we must talk about the role of Spanish investments in the Argentine business and productive fabric,” he stressed. Spain is the second investor in the country and their companies are already an indisputable part of the daily economic scenario.”

From the same room where less than a week ago Javier Milei, on his first trip to Spain as president, Had breakfast with representatives of the main companies present in ArgentinaAmbassador Bosch wanted to list them: “Santander, Telefónica, BBVA, Naturgy, Iberia, Supermercados Día, among many other Spanish companies that are already part of us.”

Hundreds of Argentines, Spanish guests and foreign ambassadors were received with rosettes at the palace in the Madrid neighborhood of Almagro that belonged to the Marquises of Argüeso and has been property of the Argentine government since 1957.

A unusual security operation of the Spanish National Police at the door of the embassy led to the assumption that among the guests there would be a minister or a high official of Pedro Sánchez’s government. It was not so.

“They are all invited, but generally their agendas do not allow them to attend,” the organization of the event justified the absence of frontline officials.

Luis Prados, programming director of the Casa de América, an institution managed by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Community of Madrid and the capital’s City Council, was present. Between May 13 and 24, Casa de América hosted the Conexión Buenos Aires-Madrid festival.

Among those summoned was the Argentine businessman Hugo Sigman, who secretly left the embassy as soon as Bosch finished his speech and the applause began.

The newly born Argentinos Liberales Association in Spain was represented by Gustavo Zeni, institutional director of the association.

And Vox, the party that organized the event in which President Milei participated last weekend in Madrid, sent its spokesperson in the Congress of Deputies, Pepa Millán, on behalf of Santiago Abascal, leader of Vox and friend of Milei. .

Also attending was the mayor of the town of Palencia where Juan de San Martín, the father of the Liberator, was born: María Inmaculada Malanda Fernández, from the Popular Party, has been mayor of Cervatos de la Cueza since 2019.

There were empanadas, choripán and trays of vacuum and loin made on the flame in the back garden of the palace. Torrontés wine and a Malbec-Merlot blend to accompany the set of tangos performed by La Argenta, a typical orchestra that will debut at the Café Berlin in Madrid on June 5.

While hosting the toast, Bosch seemed calm. Among some guests, however, there was concern about what the Casa Rosada’s response would be to the alleged clash of versions which the Spanish press highlighted regarding the nature of the trip that President Milei made to Spain between May 17 and 19.

At the end of April, Ambassador Bosch had told the Spanish government that the visit would be “private”something that later denied the presidential spokesperson, Manuel Adorni, at the insistence of journalists who attend his press conferences to know How would the expenses of the presidential trip to Spain be covered?. Adorni stated that it would be done with public money.

Hours after the toast at the Argentine embassy in Madrid, spokesman Adorni said: “It is absolutely correct that the Argentine embassy in Spain has defined the trip as a ‘private visit’ because the definition of ‘private visit’ is when there are no official meetings but meetings with businessmen, academics or relevant cultural people.”

“As also It is correct that I said that the visit was not private because we do not use the same terminology that the Foreign Ministry uses,” the spokesperson added.

In Madrid, the celebration continued this Saturday at noon (Spanish time), when the Press Palace, in the capital’s flat Plaza Callao, was filled with national team shirts – including the ambassador, who wore his under the sack-, who attended the screening of “Boys, the people’s film”, the documentary produced by Pampa Films which premiered this May 25 in Spain.

The national day agenda on the other side of the Atlantic was completed with a friendly between the Argentine Football Club and Rayo de Alcobendas “to celebrate the brotherhood between Spaniards and Argentines”.

This Saturday at noon, more than 900 people attended the screening in three rooms. Among the audience was Cayetana Alvarez de Toledo, the Popular Party deputy who is the daughter of an Argentine Peralta Ramos and who spent her adolescence in Buenos Aires.

In addition to the screening of the documentary, the anthem was sung, there was a live band that sang “Guys, now we’re excited again” by La Mosca and National Team shirts were raffled off.

The most desired was a jewel, donated by Lengends, the museum of shirts and relics from the history of football in Madrid’s Puerta del Sol: an albiceleste signed by Leo Messi.