Ayuso confronts the king: "America had to be civilized, we arrived and we established a new order"
Abuses, those that were already committed against the indigenous population of the Aztecs and Mayas
MadridIsabel Díaz Ayuso continues to be installed in her particular roadmap and proves once again that she is a free spirit within the PP. The popular executive had to work hard this Tuesday so that it did not seem that its leader, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, was discrediting Felipe VI for having recognized the "abuses" in the conquest of America. A day later, the Madrid president has skipped the attempt at fair play and has directly confronted the Spanish monarch, who for some time enrages the right. "We who carried the Cross arrived and established a new order and, above all, a way of understanding that life is sacred. It was necessary to civilize and transfer a different way of living to the New World," she expressed bluntly in an interview with OK Diario. "I am very proud of it and I have always claimed it." Unlike the king, Ayuso believes that the "abuses" were "committed" basically by the Aztecs and the Mayans "against the indigenous population itself" because "they understood sacrifices as part of their rituals."
Just this Tuesday, Felipe VI's words were received positively by Mexico. The country's president, Claudia Sheinbaum, saw it as a starting point and acknowledged that it was a "gesture of rapprochement" from the head of state with the "recognition of excesses and exterminations" that occurred "during the arrival of the Spaniards." However, what the king said generated discomfort and contradictions within the PP. The one who opened the floodgates was Alberto Núñez Feijóo, who in an interview with EsRadio downplayed the issue's significance and framed the words within an informal "conversation" and not an "institutional" declaration or speech. However, shortly after, he amended his statement: "To examine in the 21st century things that happened in the 15th century is absurd."
Later, from Congress, the PP's parliamentary spokesperson, Ester Muñoz, clarified that Feijóo was not criticizing Felipe VI's pronouncement and assured that the words of the popular leader and the monarch "concord perfectly." In Génova – Muñoz assured – they "could not agree more" with Felipe VI's statements. Furthermore, she lamented that Feijóo's statements were taken out of context: she argued that, precisely, the king said that "it is not convenient to be presentist," that is, "not to look with 21st-century eyes at what happened in the 15th century." "It is exactly what Feijóo said," she concluded. And Ayuso has also subscribed to this: "One cannot look at the past with the glasses of the present, it is a bit what he also said."
What happened? In a conversation with the ambassador of Mexico in Spain during a visit to the exhibition Half the World. Women in Indigenous Mexico, Felipe VI admitted that there are behaviors of Spain that, seen with current optics and values, are not something to be "proud of." Despite the king's words, Feijóo expressed himself "proud of the legacy" of the Spaniards in America and boasted that the Catholic Monarchs brought "human rights, universities, and hospitals" to the indigenous peoples. And the Madrid president has said the same, believing that "the work and missions on the continent have changed the world" and considering that "the world would not be understood without the work of the Hispanic monarchy."
