Milei calls “dictator” and “corrupt thief” to Sánchez in Madrid

O President of Argentina, Javier Milei, today entered the Spanish electoral campaign with insults to socialist and Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez and meetings with leaders of the People's Party (PP, right) and Vox (extreme right) during a visit to Madrid.

Milei makes today the seventh visit to Spain (not one official or state) since he arrived in the presidency of Argentina in December 2023, and started the day’s agenda with a conference in Madrid that devoted to “sinister socialism” and in which he qualified Sánchez as “indecent dictator” or “corrupt thief”, among other insults.

In parallel, he said he was a friend of the president of Vox, Santiago Abascal, and the president of the regional government of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, of the PP.

Contrary to what happened in the previous six visits to Spain, Javier Milei will not be received this time by Santiago Abascal, with the party justifying that the president of Vox “must campaign” on the ground for early legislative on 29 November.

Milei will meet with Vox Vice President Ignacio Garriga, with sources quoted by the media to reveal that this time, on the eve of elections, Abascal prefers not to be seen alongside the President of Argentina so as not to be associated with social cuts and the “image of the chainsaw” of the leader of the country of South America.

As for Isabel Díaz Ayuso, she will again receive Milei after in June 2024 having honored him at a ceremony at the headquarters of the regional government where she gave him the International Medal of the Community of Madrid.

The national leadership of the PP did not join this tribute and today there is no planned meeting of the President of Argentina with other leaders of the party.

It was Pedro Sánchez and the Spanish Socialist Party (PSOE) who publicly spoke about Milei's visit, taking advantage of it to campaign.

At the beginning of the morning, PSOE placed a tarp on the facade of the party’s headquarters in Madrid with a message that the Argentine President uses pejoratively to refer to the left, “zurdos”, which literally means “lefties” and can be translated, in the context in which the Argentine President uses it, by “leftists” or “lefties”.

“Hello, Milei. Leftists and leftists welcome you to Spain, the fastest growing country in Europe”, reads on the canvas of PSOE.

In parallel, Pedro Sánchez today changed the profile photography he has on the social networks to an image with the phrase “zurdos y orgulosos” (“leftists and proud”) and released a video in which he says: “Some think they insult us by calling us leftists. If leftist is to raise pensions, raise the minimum wage every year, defend the right to abort women or say no to war and yes to peace, then yes, I am leftist, with great honor”.

After the morning conference, organized by the association and ‘think tank’ Forum New Economy, and before the meeting with Isabel Díaz Ayuso at the end of the afternoon, Milei went to King Juan Carlos University in Madrid to participate in an initiative dedicated to the Austrian economy.

Several student organizations called for concentrations to the protest site against Milei's presence at the university.

At the morning conference, in addition to the insults to Sánchez, Milei appealed to the Spaniards to take the Socialists out of power “by kicks” on 29 November and considered that “leftist parties” in Europe are responsible for the economic stagnation that he considers to exist on the continent.

Milei also referred to the immigration policies of the European left and Spain in particular and considered that Sánchez, for electoral reasons, because “every immigrant is a vote”, encouraged a “invasion” of Ceuta, the Spanish city in North Africa where more than 70,000 people entered illegally at the end of July.

“Economic stagnation, combined with migratory irresponsibility, traces a path of decadence that is very difficult to reverse in the future,” he said.

Milei's visit to Spain is only one day and ends today, with the Argentine President saying that he still does not know if he will return to Madrid on 4 and 5 November for this year's Ibero-American Summit.

In all seven visits he has made to Spain, Milei has never met or been received by the country's two top authorities, the Prime Minister and the King, Felipe VI.