Era la foto esperada. Después de siete años de tensión, el rey Felipe VI y la presidenta de México, Claudia Sheinbaum, se han dado la mano este jueves en Palacio Nacional, en la capital mexicana. Los dos jefes de Estado han aprovechado la asistencia del monarca al partido de fútbol entre la selección española y Uruguay, este viernes en Guadalajara, para reunirse. El encuentro, que ha sido breve, tal y como había avisado la mandataria, entierra el distanciamiento político y diplomático entre los dos países que nació con la polémica carta del perdón por la conquista enviada en 2019 por el entonces presidente Andrés Manuel López Obrador.

Ha costado meses de reuniones, pequeños y grandes gestos diplomáticos, exposiciones y premios culturales, pero, finalmente, España y México han retomado su curso político. Ese que estuvo casi congelado durante años y que llevó, por ejemplo, a que Sheinbaum no invitara al Rey a su investidura en 2024 o que ningún miembro de la Casa Real llegara el año pasado a la Feria Internacional del Libro (FIL) de Guadalajara, que tenía a España como país invitado. Todo parece listo para que eso ahora quede atrás y ambos países se enfoquen en sus inevitables lazos culturales y económicos, que ni siquiera cesaron durante el distanciamiento diplomático.

Así lo ha recordado la Secretaría de Relaciones Exteriores (SRE) mexicana en un comunicado publicado este jueves en el que ha recordado que España es el segundo socio comercial de México entre los países de la Unión Europea, con un comercio bilateral de 11.100 millones de dólares. Además, la Cancillería ha recalcado, dentro de la poca información que salido del encuentro, que la reunión se “enmarca en un contexto de intensificación de las relaciones bilaterales y de los recientes gestos de reconocimiento de la importancia de los pueblos indígenas de nuestro país por parte de España”.

En su cuenta de YouTube, la presidenta ha publicado un video de poco más de tres minutos donde se observa a los dos jefes de Estado, de pie, uno al lado del otro, mientras suena el himno de México y también el de España, en un Palacio Nacional coronado con las banderas de los dos países. Después de la música, Sheinbaum y Felipe VI se giran y se estrechan la mano, mientras una voz por detrás recuerda: “A continuación se tomará la fotografía oficial de los mandatarios”.

“Esta foto no se hubiera podido dar con López Obrador”, apunta la internacionalista mexicana Pía Taracena, que identifica en la imagen uno de los caminos propios de la presidenta. Sheinbaum ha cuidado la mayoría de los pilares en política exterior colocados por su predecesor: la defensa férrea de Cuba, el distanciamiento con Ecuador o su trinchera con Pedro Castillo en Perú, por ejemplo. La normalización con España es uno de los pocos rumbos alejado de la estrategia de su predecesor.

La tensión diplomática con la Casa Real fue una de las herencias que Sheinbaum recibió de su mentor y fundador de su partido, Morena. En 2019, López Obrador mandó una carta a Felipe VI en la que le instaba a revisar y reconocer los abusos que se cometieron durante la conquista y a pedir disculpas por ellos. La carta fue filtrada y el Gobierno español reaccionó rechazando “con firmeza la exigencia”. La polémica que creció alrededor de esta misiva, que el historiador mexicano Alfredo Ávila, define en realidad como “sensata” porque incluso proponía crear un grupo de trabajo para revisar el pasado y ponía sobre la mesa las disculpas de España pero también las de México a los pueblos originarios, separó durante años a los dos países.

Ávila, investigador de la Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM), considera que el discurso contra la conquista sirvió a López Obrador para “presentar un frente nacionalista y estimular el patriotismo mexicano” durante la primera presidencia de Donald Trump, cuando el republicano ya hablaba de construir un muro que pagaran los mexicanos. “Hubiera sido muy fácil inflamar un discurso nacionalista contra Estados Unidos, pero, por supuesto, eso no le convenía a López Obrador. Hacerlo con España no tenía gran costo, porque las relaciones culturales, académicas, económicas, sociales, esas se mantuvieron”, reflexiona el historiador.

Ahora el escenario es totalmente otro. En la era del Trump 2.0., EE UU amenaza de forma constante con intervenir militarmente en México, acusa a gobernadores morenistas de tener vínculos con el crimen organizado y busca no renovar los tratados económicos. Así, este encuentro ha servido, ademas, a Sheinbaum para sellar la normalización de las relaciones diplomáticas con uno de sus aliados estratégicos en un momento de acorralamiento con Estados Unidos. Antes de la foto con el Rey de España, se encuentra la firma del tratado con la Unión Europea, el encuentro de líderes progresistas en Barcelona o el último acercamiento con Reino Unido.

The meeting scheduled at Mexico City’s National Palace on Thursday will not only seal the diplomatic reconciliation between Spain and Mexico after seven years of tension. The long-awaited photo of concord between President Claudia Sheinbaum and King Felipe VI also marks the continuation of the path that the Mexican president is forging for herself. Sheinbaum inherited the bilateral dispute from her predecessor Andrés Manuel López Obrador, and without changing the substance of the matter—the request to the Spanish Crown to acknowledge the violence perpetrated during the colonial era—she began building bridges as soon as she took office. That rapprochement, beyond the obvious cultural and economic ties and interests between both nations, has also become a strategic political alliance following the relentless pressure on Mexico from Donald Trump.

Without fanfare, and relying above all on cultural diplomacy, Sheinbaum has been repairing the broken communication channels with gestures from both sides following the controversial letter that López Obrador sent the Spanish royals in 2019, and whose request for a public apology was ignored. Reconciliation with Spain has not been the only pivot of the Mexican president. In just over a year and a half in office, Sheinbaum has taken steps to consolidate her own project, asserting her style across nearly all centers of power. Most evident among these are a more active security strategy and a relaunch of foreign policy, two of the areas where López Obrador was the weakest. The latter’s habitual reluctance to look beyond Mexico’s borders was summed up in one of his favorite slogans: “The best foreign policy is domestic policy.” Another of his phrases embodied his softer stance on confronting crime head-on: “Abrazos, no balazos (Hugs, not bullets).”

It has not been an easy path. The former president, who is the founder of the political party Morena and linchpin of the Mexican left, still commands formidable political capital. He left the presidency with his popularity hovering near 70%. Aware of his influence, he announced he would withdraw from the public spotlight so as not to condition the new president, whom he had been grooming as his heir during the turbulent internal succession in the party. “The figure of López Obrador is unusual because of his great popularity and because, for now, he is observing the principle of non-interference, which has no precedent in recent Mexican history,” says international relations expert Gabriel Guerra Castellanos, who also notes that “the president has been carving out her territory day by day, with symbolic gestures and substantive policies.”

The channel was advancing but, as in so many other cases, the Trump whirlwind ended up shaping it. Since his return to the White House, the Republican leader has deployed the most aggressive version of his policy. Beyond economic threats (over non-renewal of the USMCA free trade agreement or the imposition of tariffs), the U.S. president repeats every month his desire to intervene militarily in Mexico to fight organized crime. The tension has even led the U.S. Department of Justice to accuse Morena governor Rubén Rocha of working for the Sinaloa Cartel. “This level of pressure hadn’t been seen in a century,” says Abelardo Rodríguez, professor of international studies at the Ibero-American University, “and, of course, President López Obrador hadn’t experienced it either, given that he even had a good relationship with Trump.”

That shift in the external environment has reconfigured Sheinbaum’s playing board. “Mexico’s foreign-policy axis in the world runs through the United States,” Rodríguez adds, arguing that the challenge with its northern neighbor has forced the president into “strategic repositionings.” This includes the change of ambassador in Washington, the signing of Mexico’s treaty with the European Union, the latest rapprochement with the United Kingdom and, of course, building bridges with Spain. This thaw is also ideologically useful for both countries after recent setbacks for the left in Peru and Colombia, emphasizes Mexican historian Alfredo Ávila: “Both Pedro Sánchez’s government and Claudia Sheinbaum’s know they are increasingly isolated. That they could shake hands, first, and that the president will now meet the king, are steps toward trying to form a progressive alliance at a moment when the far right is sweeping elections everywhere.”

It is in this same context that Sheinbaum’s presence at the progressive summit Sánchez organized in April in Barcelona should be viewed. It was the first trip by a Mexican president to Spain since 2018 and, moreover, the first trip by a Morena president to Europe. The alliance appears likely to continue consolidating. In November, Madrid will host another summit that Spain hopes will reaffirm the role of the Ibero-American community in the face of White House pressure.

Thus, although specialists believe the upcoming photo of Felipe VI at the National Palace could not have taken place under López Obrador, it is not so much because the presidents have major differences in how they understand history, but because of the external whirlwind. “López Obrador’s and Sheinbaum’s views of history are very similar. It is the traditional view taught in Mexico at the end of the last century: a heroic bronze-age history, as we call it in reference to bronze monuments, with great heroes and villains. Of course, the heroes are the nationalist Mexican patriots and the villains are those who submit to foreign interests, the elites and the oligarchies,” Ávila adds.

Colmex historian Lorenzo Meyer agrees that the emphasis on pre-Hispanic peoples connects with one of the theoretical pillars of Obradorismo, the so-called Mexican humanism. “While many on the left look to the future, he turns to the past and finds characteristics in pre-Hispanic cultures worthy of praise.” Thus, in the Morena imagination, the struggle against the colonizer and against large landowners would be “a struggle in favor of a different Mexico, and therein lies the legacy of the Spaniards.”

That is why Sheinbaum continues to insist she wants Spain to learn another version of the Conquest. The only thing the president has revealed about her meeting with the king is that it will be “very brief” and that she will speak to him about Mexico’s indigenous peoples. “That idea of convincing Spain of the true history of the Conquest sounds more like a pretext to justify the fact that it is distancing itself from the previous administration’s position while the relationship is actually thawing,” assesses international relations expert Pía Taracena, who adds that three elements had to align for Thursday’s meeting: “the change of the person leading Mexico, the way the king acknowledged the abuses that occurred during the Conquest and the president’s willingness to open the channel more.”

When Sheinbaum won the election two years ago, she did not invite the Spanish king to her inauguration, and no delegation from the Spanish government attended either. But something changed. Contacts to explore a potential major exhibition on Indigenous art in Spain began in her first days in office. At that Madrid exhibition, in March, Felipe VI made the gesture of acknowledging the “abuses” of the Conquest. Previously the Spanish monarch had referred in that same setting to “injustice and pain” during colonization. Sheinbaum responded to those “gestures” by inviting the king to the World Cup. A seemingly routine protocol step, it gained relevance with the later formal invitation to Thursday’s heads-of-state meeting at the official residence and seat of Mexican power.

Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get more English-language news coverage from EL PAÍS USA Edition

It is June 2025. Three men stand in the middle of a road 14 miles north of Culiacán, the capital of the Mexican state of Sinaloa. They are armed with rifles; two wear boots and another only sandals. One of them, who is also wearing a helmet, has a vest bearing four letters: CJNG, the Spanish acronym for the Jalisco New Generation Cartel.

The image of several men from the CJNG in the cradle of the Sinaloa Cartel was captured by one of the vehicles that work for Google Maps. It had been uploaded for users to see when activating the “Street View” feature. In other images, captured between El Tecorito and the community of Los Algodones, the same members of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel can be seen in different positions: signaling cars to stop, directing them to the side, and walking after the arrival of more armed men.

The coordinates were shared on the account of a Mexican historian and verified by dozens of users, including this newspaper. Google Maps has since blocked Street View on that stretch of road, which became another example of the pact between Mexico’s two main criminal groups.

This alliance was acknowledged last week by Mexico’s security chief, Omar García Harfuch. The existence of an agreement between the Los Chapitos faction of the Sinaloa Cartel and the Jalisco New Generation Cartel has been widely suspected for more than a year, but the Mexican government confirmed it for the first time last Tuesday.

During a press conference at Mexico’s National Palace, García Harfuch reported on the “link” between the leader of the CJNG, Nemesio “El Mencho” Oseguera Cervantes, and the sons of Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, who lead Los Chapitos. According to the security chief, this was a direct relationship: El Mencho provided “funding and personnel resources in southern Sinaloa”: “nothing more.”

García Harfuch’s statements align with the report published by the U.S Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) in May 2025, which warned of this possible “strategic alliance.” The seizure of vests bearing the CJNG initials in Culiacán and the appearance of videos on social media showing members of that group in the Sinaloa Cartel’s stronghold reinforced the theory.

At the time, local authorities revealed that members of the Jalisco Cartel were operating freely in the rural northern area of Culiacán, a territory dominated — according to data from Mexico’s Attorney General’s Office (FGR) and the Defense Ministry — by Los Chapitos. It was the same area where, that very June, the Google Maps images were captured.

However, García Harfuch himself dismissed the existence of an alliance between the two groups in August of last year. That had been the case — until now.

Betrayal

That pact cannot be understood without the fratricidal war that has torn through the Sinaloa Cartel since September 2024. The fact that Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada was kidnapped and handed over to the United States by his godson Joaquín Guzmán López, son of his former partner, is not something easily forgotten in a criminal family. Since then, Sinaloa has been gripped by violence and disappearances. In the past 20 months, the fighting between the groups has left more than 2,800 people dead and 1,700 missing, according to official figures, in what is now the most serious security crisis of Claudia Sheinbaum’s government.

That betrayal, says Eduardo Guerrero, a security analyst and director of Lantia, led to “most of the organizations that formed part of that cartel siding with the Zambada family.” “That initially gave them an advantage,” he explains. “Many other groups preferred to stay out of it, and a smaller group supported the Guzmán family, which invested heavily in securing allies because they had enormous profits from fentanyl exports.”

However, as the months passed, the balance remained uneven. The downfall of figures such as Kevin Alonso Gil, known as “El 200,” head of security for Iván Archivaldo Guzmán, and “El Güerito,” a financial operator, in February 2025 tightened an increasingly suffocating noose around Los Chapitos. In recent months, the faction had lost most of its key operatives on the ground.

It was in this context that the agreement with the CJNG emerged. It was a “request for an alliance and support” from the Guzmán family to the Oseguera family, Guerrero notes. Guerrero, the director of the security consultancy Lantia, reconstructs the origins based on conversations with intelligence agents and media leaks: “The first thing El Mencho asked for was a show of loyalty, which apparently involved one of the Guzmán brothers — Alfredo, it seems — having to go live at a ranch next to El Mencho’s, without his own guards; the guards would be provided by El Mencho.” This kind of “special invitation” worked for a few months.

The deal included protection and money for Los Chapitos “as long as they facilitated the expansion of the Jalisco Cartel in the northwest of the country,” Guerrero explains, referring to the state of Sinaloa, as well as Sonora, Chihuahua, Baja California, and Baja California Sur. The Guzmán family presented these territories as areas they controlled, including key trafficking routes.

“It’s an alliance that quickly wears thin because, reportedly, the Guzmán family is unable to fulfill these promises and deliver these territories, since they are being contested. It wasn’t so easy to move into or hand over control of a territory they didn’t fully control,” the security analyst notes.

García Harfuch said that the alliance stopped working after the death of Nemesio Oseguera in a military operation in Tapalpa on February 22. “At present we have no indication that it continues. But we do not rule it out,” the security chief said.

The fall of El Mencho profoundly disrupted Mexico’s criminal landscape. While some of the main figures of the Sinaloa Cartel — such as Ovidio Guzmán and even El Mayo Zambada — are signing cooperation agreements with the U.S. Department of Justice, the succession within the CJNG remains uncertain, especially following the arrest of Audias “El Jardinero” Flores Silva.

Guerrero, who points to the intense monitoring currently being carried out by Mexican and U.S. intelligence in Jalisco because of the World Cup, believes the uncertainty will not be resolved until the soccer tournament is over. The analyst highlights the strong regional leadership within the CJNG and notes that they “do not want to risk any internal conflict now, given the reinforced security lockdown.”

On the other hand, he points to the economic strain in Sinaloa after nearly two years of conflict. “There are attempts by the Zambada family to bring about a truce,” he observes. “What remains is a great deal of uncertainty.”

Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get more English-language news coverage from EL PAÍS USA Edition