Madrid and Buenos Aires traded barbs on Saturday after Spanish Transport Minister Oscar Puente suggested Argentina’s President Javier Milei was a drug user.

Puente, during a panel discussion in Salamanca on Friday, suggested Milei had ingested “substances” during last year’s election campaign.

Milei’s office released a statement on Saturday condemning the remarks while also attacking Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez.

It accused Sanchez of “endangering Spanish women by allowing illegal immigration” and undermining Spain’s integrity by making deals with separatists, while his leftist policies brought “death and poverty.”

The release ended by saying that Argentines had “chosen to change the model that brought them misery and decadence” and “hope that the Spanish people may soon choose again to live in freedom.”

That provoked a rebuke from the Spanish Foreign Ministry, which said the terms used in the Argentine statement “do not correspond to the relations between the two brotherly countries and peoples.”

Following Milei’s win in December, relations between Argentina and Spain, ruled by a left-wing coalition led by Sanchez’s Socialist Party, have significantly cooled. 

The Argentine president has publicly supported Spain’s far-right anti-immigration Vox party. During an upcoming trip to Spain this month, Milei is scheduled to attend an event Vox party leader Santiago Abascal is setting up at the Vistalegre Palace in Madrid.

Reuters/Herald