Isabel Díaz Ayuso, a Spanish conservative politician who is the regional premier of Madrid, has landed in Mexico like a meteor, ready to use provocation as her most effective political weapon. Ayuso had been stirring things up for months with remarks about Mexico that have particularly irritated the Mexican left. Speaking from Spain, she had likened Claudia Sheinbaum’s government to the Cuban dictatorship, and defended the Spanish conquest of the Americas as a civilizing process rather than a genocide.

This Monday, it was her turn to defend all those controversial positions in the heart of Mexico, and she did so. Ayuso attended a tribute to the 16th-century conquistador Hernán Cortés alongside the mayor of the borough of Cuauhtémoc in Mexico City, Alessandra Rojo de la Vega, of the conservative PAN party. Also in attendance were cultural figures such as the writer Juan Miguel Zunzunegui and the musician Nacho Cano, who opened the event with a performance of his musical Malinche, named after a Nahua woman who served as interpreter and aide to Cortés.

“Mestizaje is a message of hope and joy,” she said, using a word that alludes to the mix of European and Indigenous American ancestry. “Faced with hate speech that divides us, those of us who see life through these alliances must find ways to speak freely,” Díaz Ayuso declared from the Frontón México, a venue of particular symbolic importance to the PAN, as it is the place where the party was founded a century ago and where they relaunched their image just a few months ago.

After seven years of cultural diplomacy between the two countries’ governments to overcome the disagreements stemming from the colonial era, Ayuso has chosen to put her finger on an issue that had caused a freeze in bilateral relations. President Sheinbaum mentioned the event with irony in her morning press conference, noting that the Spanish right’s refusal to make concessions only adds value to the recent conciliatory gestures by the king of Spain and the leftist government of Pedro Sánchez.

Mexico is positioning itself as a key arena for international political alliances. Sheinbaum is raising her global profile and a few weeks ago attended a forum to seek a progressive alliance as an alternative to the interventionism of U.S. President Donald Trump, with whom tensions have reached a fever pitch. Following the thaw in relations with Spain, Pedro Sánchez has become one of her natural allies, along with Colombia’s Gustavo Petro and Brazil’s Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

Indigenous groups protesting outside the cathedral in Mexico City.Emiliano Molina

The ripple effect of Ayuso’s provocations had been taking shape even before the tribute took place. By midday, the uproar was such that, with barely an hour’s notice, religious officials announced they were cancelling an event that had been planned in Mexico City’s cathedral. “The Eucharist is not a symbolic act to exalt people or historical events,” church officials stated in a press release. By then, several dozen representatives of Indigenous communities had already gathered at the doors of the church to read a statement against the homage to Hernán Cortés, whom they accused of being the perpetrator of “crimes against humanity” against Indigenous communities.

Shortly afterward, the mayor of Cuauhtémoc, clearly in tune with the Madrid politician, delivered a speech in which she defended the historical figure of La Malinche. “She didn’t let her origins determine her destiny,” she said. “For many years in Mexico, calling a woman a Malinche was an insult: the traitor, the guilty one, the one who betrayed us,” she remarked. “Continuing to dwell on the past won’t solve our present problems. I stopped looking for villains in history a long time ago. I prefer our roots, because roots don’t divide, they unite.”

The proceedings ended with a lengthy speech by Zunzunegui, a writer and speaker that Ayuso has relied on in the past to support the argument that Spain should not apologize for the colonial era. “I love it when they say ‘genocide…’ so why did we build hospitals? Oh, because the Church came to subjugate us. Then why did we build universities?” he asserted. “We are children of the greatest encounter in human history.”

Alessandra Rojo de la Vega speaks at the event this Monday.Emiliano Molina

Despite everything, Ayuso’s arrival hasn’t resonated much with the Mexican right. The PAN party has officially remained silent despite Rojo de la Vega’s warm reception. The political left, on the other hand, has bristled at Ayuso’s words. The parliamentary group representing the governing party, Morena, labeled Ayuso a “fascist” and “the heir to the Spanish Falange.” One of Morena’s leading intellectuals, Pedro Miguel, has submitted a formal request to the National Institute of Fine Arts (INBAL) for the exhumation of Hernán Cortés’ remains, which are currently in Mexico, “and their delivery to Díaz Ayuso or any Spanish agency or person who expresses an interest in receiving them.”

Later, the Madrid premier met with a friendlier audience at the Spanish Chamber of Commerce, whose president, Antonio Basagoiti, joked about the ever-growing community of wealthy Mexicans who have moved to upscale Madrid neighborhoods, such as Salamanca. “It’s easier to run into a Mexican friend there than in Polanco [the equivalent district in Mexico City],” he laughed. Ayuso joked back and felt compelled to clarify: “Not just in Salamanca, in all of the neighborhoods.”

Ayuso’s 10-day tour has also drawn criticism at home, where the opposition has accused her of neglecting her duties as regional premier and using Madrid taxpayers’ money.

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