MADRID (approved) .- Barack Obama lands 9 in Seville on Saturday for an official three-day visit to Spain, only four months after the US elections, which sealed the imminent end of his term in the White House, that will occur in January 2017.
This is the first visit by a US president in 15 years since starring George Bush, in June 2001, as Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Garcia -Margallo recognized as the “culmination of a process of normalization” of bilateral relations, marked by a sort of bipolarity.
Two facts reflect those extremes, one, the famous “picture of the Azores,” which recorded the meeting of 16 March 2003, in which the conservative José María Aznar put Spain at the forefront of support for the strategy of the US and UK for the invasion of Iraq, with the aim of overthrowing Saddam Hussein and destroy alleged weapons of mass destruction that were never found
the other end. once lost government by the PP in 2004, due to the punishment of the electorate by putting the country in the foreign war, socialist Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero fulfilled his campaign promise and withdrew Spanish troops from Iraq, which produced the United States cooled bilateral relations with Spain.
Obama will arrive from Warsaw (Poland), where he will participate at the NATO Summit. This visit is marked as a major event in the Spanish agenda, as also occurred with the recent visit Michelle Obama, who received treatment great event in the Spanish press.
It is symptomatic that the presidential visit takes place six months before Obama leaves the White House, and when Mariano Rajoy retains the status of acting president, because it still is not government.
the presence of the US President will also be given when in Spain has not formally constitute the new Parliament (Congress of Deputies and Senate), to be installed on July 19, which the contents of the bilateral agenda may be of little content.
so far, unofficially it spread in the meetings with king Philip VI and Rajoy, will address among other things the spread of jihadism, the Brexit, and tensions with Russia of Vladimir Putin in the eastern region of the Union European.
But perhaps the issue that mark the presence of US President in Spain, is a visit to the Naval Base in Rota (Cádiz) that for a couple of years ago became one of the facilities . strategic for Missile Shield NATO, led by the United States
the United States has in the naval base four destroyers: in February 2014 docked destroyer US Donald Cook ; and gradually arrived the USS Ross , the USS Porter and, in 2015, did the USS Carney to complete the missile shield the Mediterranean area.
This presence was thanks to the reform approved by the Spanish Congress Convention Defense Cooperation signed by Spain and the United States in 2012, to allow the deployment of these four destroyers class Arleigh Burke , to join the missile shield.
also in August 2015, without much media noise (except the publication of the journal El País ), the parliamentary majority the PP and supported by the PSOE, made another modification to the said agreement to achieve the conversion of Moron de la Frontera (56 km from Sevilla) of a temporary military base on a permanent basis for US forces.
This military base is the headquarters of the Special Forces Earth-Air Crisis Response Marine Corps (SP-MAGTF Crisis Response), whose main objective is to combat the spread of jihadism in areas of the Maghreb and the Sahel (including the Mediterranean countries of north Africa and its consequent southern neighbors, from northern Senegal on the Atlantic coast to Eritrea on the Red Sea coast, bounded by the Sahara).
the American presence in this base grew from 500 to 850 Marines of the elite, more than 500 civilians and 21 aircraft, including aircraft vertical takeoff MV-22 Osprey.
in that publication of the newspaper El País to scoop addressed the change would suffer this agreement on defense, recalled that this special force of Marines was created after the assault on the US consulate in Benghazi (Libya) in September 2012, prompting the Pentagon saw the need in the region with a unit capable of rapid intervention in case of crisis.
This unit arrived in Spain in 2013, with a temporary authorization to one year, and in 2014 its presence for another year was extended. Finally, the Pentagon resigned to seek another site and asked Spain the final deployment, which were granted.
When was filed authorization from the Council of Ministers, the Vice President Soraya Saenz de Santamaria defended the relationship bilateral cooperation in defense and security is “one of the most important, and our membership in NATO and the European Union.”
in an interview in late 2015 with the magazine Process , the prestigious jurist and Doctor of Political Sciences, Joan Garces, severely criticized this transfer of sovereignty from Spain to the requirements of NATO, led by the United States.
He recalled that this assignment sovereignty over these two military bases, Rota and Moron, began during the dictatorship of Francisco Franco, following the signing of the Covenants of Madrid, in September 1953, which allowed the military presence in four Spanish military bases, including the two above.
This helped the settlement of the Franco dictatorship in the so-called “Western bloc” after years of isolation since the end of World War II in 1945.
” I learned that Franco’s dictatorship lasted beyond 1945, when they were defeated the German and Italian fascist powers, because it gave US permanent military bases in Spanish territory, which is Rota and Moron, “explained Garces, who was personal political adviser to Chilean President Salvador Allende and in 1974 it was the Director General of UNESCO.
in 2015, he continues, despite the existing popular unrest in Spain, the government of the PP and the PSOE passed a law who put “the foundation under the full jurisdiction, 100% in the US, ie, went beyond what was the assignment that made Franco”.
the man then said, king of Spain, Felipe VI, was received by Barack Obama in the White House (September 2015), as a message that “the United States supports the Spanish monarchy, including a position on the offensive Catalan soberanismo”. Bartering is very clear, “explained the professor in International Relations.
Besides the strategic importance of the visit, regional and domestic level, both King Philip VI as Mariano Rajoy will benefit from Obama visit as a nod to their own efforts, first as head of state and the second as president who is now trying to form a government for a second term
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