Madrid hosts from this Wednesday the XXX Ibero-American Summit, an event with which the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, aspired to relaunch the format, although he will do so with notable absences of heads of State and Government from some of the most relevant countries in the region, including Brazil, Mexico, Colombia, Venezuela and Ecuador, and with the presence of the president of Argentina, Javier Milei, who recently launched serious insults against the head of the Executive.
According to government sources, the leaders of Andorra, Bolivia, Chile, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras, Portugal and the Dominican Republic will also be in the Spanish capital, in addition to the vice presidents of Colombia, Ecuador and El Salvador. The rest of the 22 countries that make up the Ibero-American Community will be represented by their foreign ministers.
Claudia Sheinbaum will not attend despite rapprochement with Mexico
The absence of Mexican president, Claudia Sheinbaum, was one of those that had generated the most attention, after contacts to seal the bilateral relationship between Spain and Mexico were considered advanced in recent weeks, in a context marked by the diplomatic crisis over the Conquest. In recent months, both the Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares, and King Felipe VI made gestures of rapprochement towards Mexico, and Sheinbaum herself recently participated in Barcelona with Sánchez, but will finally not attend the Madrid event.
Sources from Moncloa maintain that Sheinbaum makes very few international trips and emphasize that her presence in Barcelona last April, at the Summit in Defense of Democracy, was already a success. They add, moreover, that this November she will have to travel to the APEC summit, which is held in China, to take over, given that Mexico will be the next organizer.
Brazil, Venezuela and other countries justify their absences
The non-attendance of the president of Brazil, Lula da Silva, is explained by the Executive by the recent electoral campaign that has led him to a new four-year term and by the age of the president, who has just turned 81 years old. The campaign, according to these sources, has meant significant physical wear and tear and, in just a few days, Lula will have to travel to Turkey to participate in the COP31 climate summit in Antalya and transfer the presidency of this summit to the Asian country, after Brazil was the last organizer in 2025.
The president of Venezuela, Delcy Rodríguez, will also not attend, on whom European Union (EU) sanctions weigh, which, as admitted by the Executive, could have been lifted to allow her presence in Spain. However, the Government considers that the internal context and a delicate political situation after the departure of Nicolás Maduro at the beginning of the year, captured by US soldiers, have also weighed. The recently appointed chancellor, Oliver Blanco, will attend on behalf of Venezuela.
In Moncloa, these absences are downplayed, some of them from relevant ideological partners in a very polarized continent, and they assure that they are satisfied with the level of participation that will be seen in Madrid, especially when compared to the last event, held in 2024 in Cuenca (Ecuador), where there were only four heads of State or Government.
Javier Milei will travel to Madrid after his insults to Sánchez
Among those who will be in Madrid is Javier Milei, who will arrive in the capital after a recent visit to Spain in which he gravely insulted Pedro Sánchez, calling him a "dictator", "thief" and "corrupt". Despite this, the Executive expects the summit to proceed normally and reminds that it is not the first time that leaders with very different visions have coincided.
A meeting between Pedro Sánchez and Javier Milei is not planned on the sidelines of the summit, nor between Milei and King Felipe VI. The monarch will be in charge of moderating the plenary session on Thursday morning, giving the floor to each of the representatives.
Felipe VI does have several meetings planned with other leaders displaced to Madrid, including the Chilean Sebastián Kast, the Guatemalan Bernardo Arévalo, the Costa Rican Laura Fernández or the Honduran Nasry Asfura, whose country will host the next Ibero-American Summit in 2028.
Other absences and last-minute cancellations
Among the justified absences are that of the president of Panama, whose country is celebrating its National Day these days, and that of the president of Uruguay, who will receive Pope Leo XIV on an official visit at the end of the week. Other leaders, such as the Nicaraguan Daniel Ortega, have never participated in these events and do not usually travel outside their country, a pattern also shared by the Salvadoran Nayib Bukele and, now, the new Colombian president, Abelardo de la Espriella, who has promised not to leave the country during his mandate.
The Cuban president, Miguel Díaz Canel, also does not usually attend these forums, although he did attend the 2023 one in the Dominican Republic. For their part, the leaders of Peru, Keiko Fujimori, and Paraguay, Santiago Peña, have canceled their attendance at the last minute for internal reasons in their respective countries.
