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Argentina’s libertarian President Javier Milei has triggered a diplomatic row with Spain after calling the wife of prime minister Pedro Sánchez “corrupt” on a visit to Madrid.
Milei was the headline act at a Sunday rally of the European far-right organised by Spain’s Vox party and used his speech there to criticise Sánchez’s wife Begoña Gómez.
The words of the Argentine president, who did not meet Sánchez on his trip, drew a sharp rebuke from Spain’s foreign minister José Manuel Albares, who said they were “a frontal attack on our democracy, on our institutions and on Spain”.
Albares said the Spanish government would “take any measures it deems appropriate to defend our sovereignty” if Milei did not apologise. Spain also recalled its ambassador from Buenos Aires for consultations.
Milei, who met Spanish business leaders on Saturday, mocked Sánchez for pausing last month to weigh whether he wanted to carry on as premier after his wife became the target of a corruption probe.
Decrying the abuses of power that he said socialism could produce, Milei said of Sánchez: “He has a corrupt wife, he gets dirty, and takes five days to think about what to do.”
A judge launched a preliminary investigation into Sánchez’s wife for alleged influence peddling after receiving a complaint from a group with far-right links. Sánchez has described any supposed wrongdoing as “non-existent” and Gómez has not spoken about the allegations.
Josep Borrell, the EU’s top diplomat and a former Spanish foreign minister, weighed in on Milei’s words, saying: “Attacks against family members of political leaders have no place in our culture: we condemn and reject them, especially when coming from partners.”
The previous day, Sánchez spoke about the far-right meeting at a European election rally. “Why have they all chosen to meet in Spain? It’s not by chance,” he said. “They have gathered in Spain because we represent as a society, not as a government, everything that they hate and detest: feminism, social justice, the dignity of labour, a strong welfare state, democracy.”
Milei gave a lacerating speech defending free market capitalism in which he slammed state interventionism and attacked socialism as “cancerous”.
“This parasitic idea of the west must be destroyed. This idea that politicians have to look after the citizen from the cradle to the grave,” Milei said. “Social justice is always unjust.”
Marine Le Pen, the leader of the French far-right, also spoke at the rally, which was intended to fire up voters ahead of European elections on June 9 and drew 11,000 people to a former bullring, according to Vox.
It was addressed via video link by Italy’s prime minister Giorgia Meloni and Hungarian premier Viktor Orbán.
The previous day Milei met a group of business leaders including Héctor Grisi, chief executive of the bank Santander; Jorge Sáenz-Azcunaga, global head of country monitoring at lender BBVA; and Alfonso Gómez Palacios, head of Telefónica’s business in Latin America.
Milei and Sánchez’s government have clashed before. This month Óscar Puente, Spain’s transport minister, suggested that the Argentine president had “ingested substances” during a television appearance. Milei responded in a lengthy statement accusing Sánchez of pursuing policies that “only bring poverty and death”.
Spain is Argentina’s second-largest direct foreign investor after the US.
Since Milei’s election victory in November he has routinely prioritised meetings with rightwing figures over the current leftwing leaders of many of Argentina’s traditional allies.
He posed for photos with Brazil’s former leader Jair Bolsonaro on the eve of his inauguration in December, for example, but has yet to meet president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
In February, after Milei spoke at US rightwing rally the Conservative Political Action Conference, his team shared footage of him backstage telling former president Donald Trump he hoped that he would win November’s presidential election.
