Argentina’s President Javier Milei gestures as he presents his e-book “El camino del libertario” in Madrid, Spain, on Friday.
Manu Fernandez/AP
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Manu Fernandez/AP
Argentina’s President Javier Milei gestures as he presents his e-book “El camino del libertario” in Madrid, Spain, on Friday.
Manu Fernandez/AP
BUENOS AIRES, Argentina — Even earlier than kicking off a three-day go to to Madrid on Friday, Argentina’s libertarian President Javier Milei stirred controversy, accusing the socialist authorities of bringing “poverty and dying” to Spain and weighing in on corruption allegations in opposition to the prime minister’s spouse.
In such circumstances, a typical visiting head of state could attempt to fix fences with diplomacy.
Not Milei. The brash economist has no plans to fulfill Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez throughout his three days within the Spanish capital — nor the Spanish king, nor some other authorities official. As an alternative, he’ll attend a far-right summit Sunday hosted by Sánchez’s fiercest political opponent, the Vox occasion.
The unorthodox go to was enterprise as ordinary for Milei, a darling of the worldwide far proper who has bonded with tech billionaire Elon Musk and praised former U.S. President Donald Trump. Earlier this yr on a visit to the US, Milei steered away from the White Home and took the stage on the Conservative Political Motion Convention, or CPAC, the place he railed in opposition to abortion and socialism and shared a bear hug with Trump.
Milei offered his 2022 e-book, “The Method of the Libertarian,” in Madrid Friday at a literary occasion organized by La Razón, a conservative Spanish newspaper.
The e-book — withdrawn from circulation in Spain earlier this month as a result of the back-flap biography erroneously mentioned Milei had earned a doctorate — traces his meteoric rise in politics from eccentric TV character to nationwide lawmaker and descriptions his radical free-market financial concepts.
To thunderous applause, Milei condemned socialism as “an mental fraud and a horror in human phrases.”
“The nice factor is that the highlight is shining on us in all places and we’re making the reds (leftists) uncomfortable everywhere in the world,” Milei mentioned.
He took the chance to advertise the outcomes of his harsh austerity marketing campaign in Argentina, celebrating a decline in month-to-month inflation in April although making no point out of the Buenos Aires subway fares that greater than tripled in a single day.
Repeating a marketing campaign pledge to remove Argentina’s central financial institution — with out giving additional particulars — Milei promised to make Argentina “the nation with probably the most financial freedom on the earth.”
On the occasion Milei gave an enormous hug to his ideological ally Santiago Abascal, the chief of the hard-right Vox occasion and the one politician with whom Milei has precise plans to fulfill in Madrid.
The Vox summit Sunday seeks to carry collectively far-right figures from throughout Europe in a bid to rally the occasion’s base forward of European parliamentary elections in June. Milei described his attendance a “ethical crucial.” He additionally has plans to fulfill Spanish enterprise executives Saturday.
Tensions between Milei and Sánchez have simmered for the reason that second the Spanish prime minister declined to congratulate the libertarian economist on his shock election victory final November.
However hostility exploded earlier this month when one among Sánchez’s ministers advised Milei had taken narcotics. The Argentine presidency responded with an unusually harsh official assertion accusing Sánchez’s authorities of “endangering the center class with its socialist insurance policies that carry nothing however poverty and dying.”
The prolonged authorities assertion additionally accused Sánchez of getting “extra necessary issues to take care of, such because the corruption accusations in opposition to his spouse.”
The allegations of affect peddling and corruption introduced by a right-wing group in opposition to Sánchez’s spouse, Begoña Gómez, had prompted Sánchez, one among Europe’s longest serving Socialist leaders, to think about stepping down.