Spain will officially recall its ambassador to Argentina after President Javier Milei refused to apologise for his comments about Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez's wife, AFP reports.
Spain recalled its ambassador to Argentina over the weekend, and Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Albarez said the envoy "will definitively remain in Madrid. Argentina will no longer have a Spanish ambassador".
Argentina's president sparked outrage with his attack on socialism over the weekend while at a conference in Madrid organised by the far-right Vox party.
"The world's elites do not realise how destructive the application of the ideas of socialism can be. They don't know what kind of society and state this can create, what kind of people cling to power and what level of abuse this generates. When you have a corrupt wife, let's say, it taints the situation and it takes you five days to think about it," Milei said.
Sanchez recently considered resigning after Spanish prosecutors launched a preliminary corruption investigation into his wife, Begona Gomez, which was quickly dropped.
Within hours of Milei's attack, Spain recalled its ambassador, and Albarez condemned the visiting president's "insult."
He demanded a public apology from Milei, saying Madrid did not rule out the possibility of severing diplomatic relations. Sanchez also called on Miley to retract his comments.
But the Argentine government condemned what it called "lightning and impulsive threats" and demanded that the Sanchez government apologise.
Milei, a self-proclaimed "anarcho-capitalist", won last November's election on a promise to reduce Argentina's massive national debt to zero. He introduced an austerity programme under which the government cut public subsidies.
But he has also become known for his controversial statements.
For weeks, diplomatic tensions between Spain and Argentina grew, leading to the latest dispute. Last month, a Spanish minister indicated that Milei had taken drugs. / BGNES
