When Leo XIV arrived in Madrid, King Felipe VI and Queen Letizia were at the foot of the plane. The head of government Pedro Sánchez too. Isabel Díaz Ayuso, president of the Community of Madrid, too – or, brought together on the same tarmac, two of the most antagonistic figures on the Spanish political scene. On the one hand, the head of the socialist government, whose minority coalition has held together for two years thanks to agreements concluded with the Catalan and Basque independence groups, and whose so-called “democratic memory” law, adopted in October 2022, has put the fractures inherited from the civil war and Francoism back at the center of public debate. On the other, the regional president of the Popular Party, who has made Madrid the laboratory of an uninhibited right, liberal on the fiscal level and conservative on the cultural level, regularly denouncing the “balkanization” of the country. From the first images, the symbol was there: on June 6, Leo XIV arrived in a politically fractured Spain, but all his authorities had come to welcome him.
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