Pedro Sánchez, the President of the Government of Spain, is continuing with his international agenda. After a three-day visit to Mauritania, Gambia, and Senegal, he will be traveling to China on September 7th for a week-long trip, as announced by La Moncloa on Friday. The People’s Party has taken advantage of this announcement to claim that Sánchez is “not comfortable” in Spain, that it “burns him”, in the words of Elías Bendodo, the Deputy Secretary of Autonomous and Local Coordination and Electoral Analysis. “We have a president on the run,” he added. Sánchez had previously visited China in March 2023 to meet with President Xi Jinping, whom he will meet again on this trip to Beijing, the capital, and Shanghai, to inaugurate the 9th Spain-China Forum. This event is organized by the Spain China Council Foundation and the Association for Friendship of the Chinese People with Foreigners, and has not been held since 2015. It was conceived in 2003 to establish a platform of dialogue between various actors from Spanish and Chinese societies, as explained by the Spain China Council Foundation.
President Sánchez recently inaugurated this week with a tour of Mauritania, Gambia, and Senegal, key countries for irregular immigration to Spain, also serving as the gateway to the European Union during a surge of arrivals by boat in the Canary Islands. With this tour, along with the upcoming visit to China, Bendodo has launched a series of criticisms against Sánchez for allegedly being absent from the country: “First [Sánchez] cannot go out on the street because he gets booed; if he is here [in Spain], they will ask him about his wife [referring to the Begoña Gómez case], about the Ministry of Development [referring to the Koldo case], about his brother, about financing [of Catalonia],” Bendodo enumerated at an event in Malaga. In addition to China, the leader of the Government is also planning to travel to Paris next week to support the Spanish team participating in the Paralympic Games. However, La Moncloa has not specified the dates of this trip to the French capital. Queen Letizia has been in Paris since Thursday night and will remain there until Monday, according to the planned agenda released by the Royal House.
After China, the next foreign trip planned for the President of the Government will be to New York City (USA), to attend the United Nations General Assembly between September 23 and 27.
