The Spanish Defense Minister, Margarita Robles, has met her American counterpart at the Pentagon during a lightning visit to Washington that represents one of the highest-level bilateral meetings between the two governments, but during which she has avoided answering questions of the media, just after the dismissal of the director of the National Intelligence Center for listening to political leaders.
In his meeting with Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, Robles said that Spain will continue to send weapons and humanitarian material to Ukraine, and described US support as “essential and fundamental”, as reported by the EFE agency , which was allowed to accompany the minister inside the Pentagon.
Austin, for his part, said that Spain is “a firm ally” of the US and recognized the value “of Spanish leadership” on NATO’s southern flank.
In January, Foreign Minister José Manuel Albares visited Washington and was received at the State Department by his US counterpart, Antony Blinken. In April, the Vice President and Minister of Economy, Nadia Calviño, came to the meetings of the International Monetary Fund. As this newspaper learned, Calviño was negotiating a meeting with her counterpart in the US, Kamala Harris, who finally canceled the appointment alleging agenda reasons.
Robles arrived in Washington on Wednesday and returns to Madrid this Thursday, sources from the Spanish embassy in the US have told ABC. His visit comes just over a month after the summit that NATO will hold in Madrid on the 29th. and July 30, and during which Joe Biden will visit Spain. In June 2021, Biden was seen with the president of the Spanish Government, Pedro Sánchez, in a fleeting conversation in a corridor on the margins of a NATO summit in Brussels. In March 2022 they greeted each other very briefly again on the sidelines of another NATO summit in Brussels.
In the past, the White House has publicly thanked Spain for the support given to Ukraine within NATO, and especially for collaborating with the FBI, the judicial police, in the seizure of the yacht of a Russian tycoon sanctioned by the US Treasury.
Minister Robles’ visit has focused on ceremonial acts and official meetings. She first went to the Arlington Cemetery, where she participated in a floral offering at the tomb of the unknown soldier. Later she arrived at the Pentagon, at whose doors she was received by Secretary Austin in a ceremony in which the hymns of Spain and the United States were played. In a confusion of protocol, Minister Robles shook hands with the chest, as the Americans do, when the US anthem has sounded, and not the Spanish one.
Then Robles entered a meeting with Austin, but most of the press was left out and the public media and cameramen were given access. As he has been wont to do on recent visits, including President Sánchez’s to New York and California last year, the Spanish government has markedly limited media access to politicians. Even so, this visit by Robles has been even more restrictive, since the minister has not met with the media at the embassy, as Calviño or the Minister of Commerce, Reyes Maroto, did during her various visits.
At the beginning of May, the Government dismissed Esteban, the director of the CNI, due to pressure from the independence movement following journalistic revelations that independence politicians were spied on with the Israeli Pegasus software. President Sánchez himself also said that he had been spied on with the same program afterwards. Not satisfied with this dismissal, on May 12 the Parliament of Catalonia requested the resignation of Minister Robles.
After his meeting with Austin, Robles had a working lunch with the Secretary of the US Navy, Carlos del Toro.
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