Argentine President Javier Milley made the gesture while presenting his book “The Road to Freedom” in Madrid, Spain, on Friday.
Manu Fernandez/AP
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Manu Fernandez/AP
Argentine President Javier Milley made the gesture while presenting his book “The Road to Freedom” in Madrid, Spain, on Friday.
Manu Fernandez/AP
BUENOS AIRES, Argentina — Even before he began a three-day visit to Madrid on Friday, Argentina’s liberal President Javier Milley stirred controversy by blaming his socialist government for Spain’s “Poverty and death” and weighed in on the Prime Minister’s corruption allegations.
In this case, a typical visiting head of state might try to patch things up diplomatically.
Not Miley. The brash economist has no plans to meet Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, the King of Spain or any other government official during his three days in the Spanish capital. Instead, he will attend a far-right summit on Sunday hosted by the Vox party, Sanchez’s fiercest political rival.
The unorthodox visit was business as usual for Mire, a darling of the global far right who is close to tech billionaire Elon Musk and has praised former U.S. President Donald Trump. Donald Trump. During a trip to the United States earlier this year, Milley eschewed the White House and took the stage at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), where he denounced abortion and socialism and embraced Trump.
Millais presented his 2022 book “The Libertarian Way” on Friday at a literary event in Madrid organized by Spanish conservative newspaper La Razón.
The book was halted in Spain earlier this month after a later biography incorrectly stated that Mire received a doctorate. his radical free market economic ideas.
To thunderous applause, Millais denounced socialism as “an intellectual fraud and a human horror.”
“The good thing is that the spotlight is on us everywhere and we make red[leftists]all over the world uncomfortable,” Milley said.
He took the opportunity to tout the results of Argentina’s tough austerity policies, celebrating a fall in inflation in April but failing to mention that Buenos Aires metro fares more than tripled overnight.
Milley reiterated his campaign pledge to abolish Argentina’s central bank – without providing further details – promising to make Argentina “the freest economy in the world”.
At the event, Milley gave a big hug to his ideological ally Santiago Abascal, leader of the far-right Vox party and the only politician Milley actually planned to meet in Madrid.
The Vox summit on Sunday aims to bring together far-right figures from across Europe to unite the party’s base ahead of European Parliament elections in June. Milley called his attendance a “moral necessity.” He also plans to meet with Spanish business executives on Saturday.
Tensions between Milley and Sánchez have been simmering since the Spanish prime minister refused to congratulate the liberal economist on his shock electoral victory last November.
But hostility erupted earlier this month when one of Sanchez’s ministers suggested Milley was a drug addict. Argentina’s president responded with an unusually harsh official statement, accusing Sanchez’s government of “whose socialist policies will only bring poverty and death and endanger the middle class.”
The lengthy government statement also accused Sanchez of having “more important issues to deal with, such as corruption allegations against his wife.”
A right-wing group has leveled accusations of influence peddling and corruption against Sanchez’s wife, Begoña Gomez, prompting Sanchez, one of Europe’s longest-serving socialist leaders, to consider resigning.
