As he did with the president of Brazil, Lula da Silva, last Friday, after the bilateral summit with Spain held at the Palau de Pedralbes, the president of the Generalitat, Salvador Illa, took the president of Mexico, Claudia Sheinbaum, to the Barcelona Supercomputer Center (BSC), the leading high-performance computing center in Spain and one of the most important in Europe.
Read more Spain will formally ask Europe to break the association agreement with Israel
Illa was accompanied on the visit by the Minister of Science, Innovation and Universities, Diana Morant; the Mayor of Barcelona, Jaume Collboni; the Minister of Research and Universities of the Generalitat, Núria Montserrat; the Secretary of Foreign Affairs (ministerial rank), Roberto Velasco; the Head of the Office of the Presidency of Mexico, Lázaro Cárdenas Batel, and the ambassador, Quirono Ordaz. Also present were the spokesperson for the Comuns and first secretary of the Congress Bureau, Gerardo Pisarello, and the singer Joan Manuel Serrat.
During the visit, Illa and Sheinbaum held a meeting in which, according to sources from the Govern, they discussed the connection between Catalonia and Mexico and the collaboration between the BSC and Mexican scientific institutions. Illa emphasized the public nature of the facility’s governance, shared by the Generalitat, the Government of Spain, and the Polytechnic University of Catalonia, as a guarantee of technology being put at the service of science and the common interest.
“President Sheinbaum is a woman in favor of science, we share this approach and this has facilitated the meeting”
“President Sheinbaum is a woman in favor of science, we share this approach and this has facilitated the meeting. We are very happy, eager to collaborate and help, and to say that many solutions to the problems we face today as humanity will come from science,” the president commented upon leaving.
The president presented Sheinbaum with a Gaudí dragon figure; a reproduction of the exile election act of Josep Tarradellas as president of the Generalitat, which was held in Mexico City; the lithograph ‘Enfermos Camp 2 BIS Argelers S.Mer’ by Josep Narro (1939), which illustrates the detention of republican exiles in Camp d’Argelers; the book ‘Jaume Nunó. Beyond the National Anthem’, written by Cristian Cantón and Raquel Tovar, which reviews the figure of the Catalan who composed the Mexican anthem; and the book ‘Art and Exile. Catalan Exile Artists’.
Among Illa and Sheinbaum’s companions was Joan Manuel Serrat, to illustrate the relationship between Catalonia and Mexico
The presence of Joan Manuel Serrat on this visit stands out, according to the Catalan Executive, because it illustrates the relationship between Catalonia and Mexico, and at one point during the visit, when they were in the BSC chapel, the singer-songwriter’s famous song ‘Mediterráneo’ played.
Illa’s meeting with the Mexican president takes place before her return to Mexico after staying in Barcelona for three days to attend the progressive summit held in the Catalan capital, promoted by the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, and his counterpart Lula da Silva. The Catalan leader explained that the objective of this visit was to show Sheinbaum the “first-class” facilities of the BSC.
Read more Bandy Lee: “Trump is in psychiatric crisis and controls 5,000 nuclear warheads”
For her part, Morant considered this visit very important and asserted that “public science is also a way to build democracy, to build peace, to work on cooperation and multilateralism,” in addition to recalling the collaboration that occurs between the two countries in areas such as artificial intelligence through the BSC.
Collboni remarked that the relations between Spain and Mexico are of “great depth” and highlighted the importance of Sheinbaum’s visit which, he said, is great news that they celebrate with much enthusiasm.
Sheinbaum’s visit to the BSC comes after her participation this Saturday in Barcelona in the IV Meeting in Defense of Democracy, a high-level forum with heads of government and other institutional leaders from about twenty countries to address the problem generated by the rise of the far-right and Trumpism in international relations.
At this forum, the Mexican leader and President Sánchez relaunched bilateral relations, to such an extent that Sheinbaum denied there had been a diplomatic crisis with Spain in recent years, referring to the controversy over the recognition of the suffering caused by the arrival of Spanish conquerors in America, which had chilled relations between the two countries to a freezing point. Sheinbaum acknowledged the rapprochement shown in recent months by King Felipe VI, after his recognition of the abuses at that historical moment, and by President Sánchez, and stressed the importance of recognizing “the strength of indigenous peoples” for Mexico.
The Catalan Legislature
Illa to convene the Govern at Món Sant Benet next weekend
The president of the Generalitat will gather his ministers next weekend at Món Sant Benet, in the Bages region (Barcelona), in order to “boost the Govern’s action,” as confirmed by sources from the Catalan Executive. This will be Illa’s fourth Govern meeting away from the Palau de la Generalitat, following those held in Poblet (Tarragona), shortly after taking office in August 2024; in Vall de Núria (Girona), in April 2025; and in Arnes (Tarragona), in August last year. In this case, the meeting will serve to “accelerate the transformation” of Catalonia and its public services, according to the same sources. After four months of political intensity marked by the approval of the new financing model, which still needs to enter its validation phase in Congress; the Rodalies crisis, the president’s convalescence due to an infection, protests by teachers and doctors, and the controversy with ERC over this year’s budget, the socialist Executive wants to shore up the legislature with the definitive approval of a budget, the first of Illa’s mandate, to guarantee the viability of the legislature until its end. The goal set by the socialists is to have these budgets approved with the support of the investiture allies – ERC and Comuns – before the summer break.
Read more Trump purges his original sin
