British News Agency

In March 2019, then-Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador wrote a letter to King Felipe VI and Pope Francis, then leader of the world’s Catholics, calling on them to apologize for the “massacres and oppression” committed during colonization and conquest.

The letter sparked an angry reaction from the Spanish government, which said that Spain’s actions in Mexico 500 years ago could not be judged “in light of current conditions” and that the shared history of the two nations should be viewed “without anger and from a common perspective.”

However, on Friday, the Spanish government signaled a more conciliatory and remorseful approach. Speaking at the opening of an exhibition in Madrid dedicated to Mexico’s Indigenous women, Spain’s Foreign Minister José Manuel Albares reflected on the nations’ shared history.

Albares said, “This is a very human history, and like all of humanity’s history, it has both light and shadow. There was pain — the pain and injustice suffered by the Indigenous peoples to whom this exhibition is dedicated. There was injustice, and today it is right to acknowledge it and feel sorrow for it, because it is part of our shared history, which we can neither deny nor forget.”

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum welcomed Albares’s comments, saying they represent a step toward acknowledging past wrongs.