Spain will "definitively" withdraw its ambassador to Argentina after President Javier Milei refused to apologize for calling Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez's wife "corrupt," Spain's foreign minister said on Tuesday, May 21. Spain withdrew its ambassador to Argentina at the weekend and Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Albares said that the envoy "will remain definitively in Madrid. Argentina will no longer have a Spanish ambassador."
Argentina's outspoken president caused outrage with an attack on socialism at the weekend while at a Madrid conference organized by the far-right Vox party. "The global elites don't realize how destructive it can be to implement the ideas of socialism," Milei said. "They don't know the type of society and country that can produce, the type of people clinging to power and the level of abuse that generates." He added: "When you have a corrupt wife, let's say, it gets dirty, and you take five days to think about it."
Sanchez, a Socialist, recently considered resigning after Spanish prosecutors opened a preliminary corruption investigation against his wife, Begona Gomez, which was quickly closed. Within hours of Milei's attack, Spain recalled its ambassador and Albares slammed the visiting president's "insult."
He demanded a "public apology" from Milei, saying that Madrid would not exclude the possibility of rupturing diplomatic ties. Sanchez also called on Milei to retract his comments. However, the Argentina government slammed what it called "flashy and impulsive threats" and insisted that Sanchez's government should apologize.
Milei, a self-declared "anarcho-capitalist", won elections last November with a vow to cut Argentina's vast public debt to zero. He has instituted an austerity program that has seen the government slash public subsidies. But he has also become known for his controversial remarks.
There have been weeks of rising diplomatic tensions between Spain and Argentina leading up to the latest spat. One Spanish minister last month indicated that Milei took drugs.