With Pedro Sánchez in government, “the Cuban, Venezuelan, Nicaraguan and Iranian drug dictatorships” have “financing assured”, while they celebrate ETA and the Catalan separatism that wants to “end Spain”. The affirmations do not come from Vox, but from Uruguay, in the mouth of an influential senator who unleashed a serious diplomatic incident between Montevideo and Madrid.
“With the PSOE, the financing and values ??of the Cuban, Venezuelan, Nicaraguan, Iranian narco-dictatorships, the terrorism of ETA, and the Catalan separatism that wants to end Spain are assured. A luxury option. But the PP won.” The phrase, in a tweet, was released by Senator Graciela Bianchi in the Spanish early morning of July 24, once the results of the general elections were known.
Bianchi, who in those days was in the exercise of the vice-presidency of the country, went further in his criticism of a PSOE that, he argued, “is not that of Felipe González”, and pointed against Sánchez with a virulence that Santiago Abascal himself would envy. : “Sanchismo is that of the Civil War in which communism and anarchism predominated; and if it had not imploded, the Soviet regime would continue to be admired. Stalin was the inspirer of that PSOE. Studying History solves it.”
Bianchi’s astonishing statements unleashed a crisis in the Uruguayan government headed by Luis Lacalle Pou. The senator was in the exercise of the vice presidency precisely because of a trip to Madrid by the number two in the government, Beatriz Argimón.
The Spanish Foreign Ministry summoned the Uruguayan ambassador in Madrid, Ana Teresa Ayala, while Argimón was meeting in Madrid with Juan Fernández Trigo, Secretary of State for Latin America. Francisco Bustillo, Uruguayan foreign minister and former ambassador to Spain, had a telephone conversation with the Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares.
Previously, Bustillo had met with the Spanish ambassador in Uruguay, Santiago Jiménez Martín, to whom he apologized on behalf of the Uruguayan State.
Bianchi, 69, is a senator from the National Party, also known as Blanco, a conservative-liberal party led by Lacalle Pou, head of a five-party government coalition. The verbose senator joined the National Party a decade ago, coming from a left-wing family that fled the fascist Italy of Benito Mussolini.
The Broad Front, the left-wing coalition that governed Uruguay between 2005 and 2020, harshly criticized Bianchi’s statements, who in the last few hours held meetings with Lacalle Pou and Bustillo.
“The outbursts of the senator in exercise of the vice presidency of the Republic, Graciela Bianchi, against the Spanish president, Pedro Sánchez, are a new international shame for Uruguay,” said Fernando Pereira, president of the Broad Front. “Unfortunately it is not an isolated incident, it adds to an endless number of attacks on progressive presidents, journalists and international organizations. And unfortunately, Bianchi is not the only one in the government to do so,” he added.
Lacalle Pou is a dissonant voice in Latin America, with frequent dialectical confrontations in the different Summits of presidents he attends, especially due to his critical position on the situation in countries like Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua or what derives from the War in Ukraine. Her relationship with Sánchez is cordial, although the Uruguayan has not yet made a state visit to Spain.
Albares settled the situation with a diplomatic tweet: “I have spoken with my Uruguayan counterpart, Francisco Bustillo, about the excellent bilateral relations between Spain and Uruguay.”
After emphasizing that she is a regular reader of EL MUNDO and El País, Bianchi refused to delve into the subject in a brief conversation with this newspaper: “The President of the Republic and the Foreign Minister are responsible for International Relations of the Uruguayan state” , settled.
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