The next few days will be decisive in an operation of high and delicate diplomatic engineering that will affect South America, but that is also very important for the European Union (EU): getting Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, president of Brazil, and Javier Milei, imminent President of Argentina, are able to sit down and talk.

If the operation is delicate it is, in large part, the fault of both. If Milei campaigned stating that Lula was a “socialist” with whom he did not want to interact, because socialism is corrupt and sinks his countries, Lula sent his team specialized in winning elections to Buenos Aires to help the Peronist Sergio Massa. But Massa lost, Lula congratulated Milei without naming him and hours later Milei had a smiling video conference with Jair Bolsonaro.

It is difficult to experience more attacks in such a short time, both the Brazilian Foreign Minister, Mauro Vieira, and the future Argentine Foreign Minister, Diana Mondino, are aware of this.

“Milei has already chosen the president he wants to have in Buenos Aires on the day of the inauguration,” a high source from Itamaraty, the Brazilian Foreign Ministry, told EL MUNDO, with bitter irony..

On the night that Milei won the Argentine presidency with 55.6 percent of the votes, Eduardo Bolsonaro, one of the former president's sons, uploaded a drawing to social networks in which his father and Milei were seen. Donald Trump smiling. The president-elect of Argentina has strong affinities with the former US president and the former Brazilian president, and is well aware that Bolsonaro is nothing short of the devil for Lula.

The tense situation added a new ingredient this Wednesday, when Milei published a message on the social network Argentina”.

The message included the mention of several world leaders, including the Chilean Gabriel Boric, from the left, the Italian Giorgia Meloni, from the right, the Frenchman Emanuel Macron, the Ukrainian Volodimir Zelensky and the British Foreign Minister, David Cameron.. Lula did not appear, despite the fact that the same Sunday the Brazilian congratulated the Argentines on their election, nor did Pedro Sánchez, who has not yet established contact with Milei.

The Argentine has insisted that he will not interact with “socialist or communist” countries, a position that his chancellor, Mondino, must moderate.. The future head of Argentine foreign relations has been talking with her Brazilian counterpart, Mauro Vieira, and with the Brazilian ambassador to Argentina, Julio Glinternick Bitelli, as well as with the Argentine ambassador to Brazil, Daniel Scioli.. Between the four of them they are building a network that allows the two presidents to feel safe to take the step of starting a relationship.

Scioli's case is especially interesting. Peronist presidential candidate in 2015, narrowly defeated by Mauricio Macri, managed to get Bolsonaro and the current Argentine president, Alberto Fernández, to talk and understand each other on some issues despite having started their governments by exchanging disqualifications and insults. Scioli wants to remain in Brasilia as an ambassador, and it would not be strange if he did so: Milei was part of his economic teams in the 2015 campaign.

On Tuesday night, Lula gave a signal of detente at the Rio Branco diplomacy school, in the Itamaraty Palace.

“I don't have to like the president of Chile, Argentina or Venezuela. He doesn't have to be my friend. He has to be president of his country, I have to be president of my country. We have to have a Brazilian state policy and he has to have his. We have to sit at the table, each one defending their interests. There cannot be supremacy of one over the other, we have to reach an agreement. “That is the art of democracy.”

We must “try to live democratically in adversity,” Lula added. A coexistence that would be greeted with joy in Brussels, headquarters of the European Union (EU), which is seeking to close the strategic association agreement with Mercosur and the last thing it needs is for Brasilia and Buenos Aires not to understand each other. And also important for the rest of the world, because Brazil will preside over the G-20 in 2024, and a fight between the South American giant and its main regional partner would not exactly be a help.

The Chavista chancellor, Yván Gil, today denounced the “vengeful kidnapping of our team (in reference to the Venezuelan soccer team, Vinotinto), which played an extraordinary game yesterday.”. Nicolás Maduro's minister accused the government of Peru of preventing the refueling of fuel on the plane that was taking his national team back to Venezuela, after drawing 1-1 with the white and red team in a very controversial duel played on Tuesday at the National Stadium in Lime.

“The government of Peru commits a new arbitrariness against Venezuelans,” argued the chancellor, after a match marked by “identity control of foreign people”, as announced by the government of Dina Boluarte, to intimidate Venezuelan emigrants.. La Vinotinto had the support of its fans on this qualifying day for the 2026 World Cup thanks to the million emigrants who arrived in Lima fleeing the Bolivarian revolution.

The controversy continued once the match was over, when the Venezuelan players tried to greet their fans and give them their shirts.. Salomón Rondón, one of its stars, did achieve it, but a group of Peruvian police prevented his colleagues from approaching the stands.. One of them brandished a baton and hit the most angry players.. Several teammates calmed down the most angry ones and the situation ended with applause shared between the players and the Venezuelan public, who maintained an exemplary attitude..

“The police stopped me, I don't know what happened, they took out the sticks to hit us, they hit me with two blows. They broke me a little but nothing serious. These are things that shouldn't happen.. The police also started hitting people,” defenseman Nahuel Ferraresi later denounced..

Hundreds and hundreds of Venezuelan motorcyclists, most of them home food delivery workers, toured the streets of Lima to escort their team's bus to the hotel.. A snake of lights for the visiting team never seen before in the World Cup qualifiers.

“It is at least embarrassing that a football event of such magnitude has been taken as a battlefield to expose the basest passions of anti-Venezuelan xenophobia by a Peruvian police authority,” the Ministry of Popular Power for Human Rights denounced in a statement. Youth and Sports.

After becoming a welcoming land during the administrations of the moderate Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, Martín Vizcarra and Francisco Sagasti, Peru's immigration policy began to change with the radical Pedro Castillo and has taken a definitive turn with the current government of Dina Boluarte. At least one and a half million Venezuelans currently live in Peru.

The government has launched an “expedited mechanism for the expulsion of migrants who have entered irregularly or who threaten order or security,” Juanita Goebertus, director for the Americas of Human Rights Watch (HRW), explained to EL MUNDO..

“This mechanism raises serious doubts about respect for due process and the protection of these people, including potential asylum seekers.. It cannot be assumed that in 48 hours the administrative authority will be able to properly analyze the individual situation of the person in question.. Furthermore, by giving a period of 3 days to file an appeal against the decision, but which does not suspend the sanction from being carried out, people could be expelled from the national territory and would have to follow the process from outside,” the expert warned. to this newspaper.

“Why do we convey an image of greater division than exists, when we agree on the fundamental elements?”. The Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares, asked himself this question at the press conference after the first meeting with his counterparts from Med9, the coalition of Mediterranean countries in which Spain, Portugal, France, Italy, Greece, Malta, Cyprus, Slovenia and Croatia, and after addressing the Gaza conflict as the main topic of the day.

The ministers of Italy, France and Cyprus were absent from the inter-ministerial meeting, and they sent other members of their cabinets. Although advancing in unity on the Israel-Gaza conflict was the objective, on October 27 it became clear that the nine countries are not going in the same direction. That day, the resolution on Gaza proposed by Jordan was voted on in the United Nations General Assembly.. Croatia voted against while Cyprus, Italy and Greece opted to abstain.. The rest were in favor.

Despite these discordant voices, which Albares recognizes shows an “apparent division”, the minister has opined that “the fundamental elements regarding the solution [to the conflict] are common to the 27”. The European Union has a single voice in matters of Foreign Affairs, which is that of Josep Borrell and, as Ian Borg, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Malta, present at the press conference, recalled: “Europe is increasingly aligned”, has reflected.

According to Albares, during the meeting “there was a consensus that what we had to do is that those of us who support the recognition of the Palestinian State have to come together and speak in an intelligent way, so that this favors peace in the Middle East.”. The Foreign Minister recalled that Spain was the country that spoke of the need for “a peace conference that would lead to the materialization of these two states, a State of Palestine and one of Israel” and that now that formula has been made the European Union itself, “and it is beginning to be that of the Arab league,” he assured.

Regarding the deadlines for this conference to take place, Albares has recognized that it is very important for Israel and Palestine to sit down, and that at this moment the conditions do not exist.. However, he has insisted on the importance of “pressing” for “a solution of two states living together”, and that now we must convey that “we cannot resign ourselves to the daily life of Palestinians and Israelis every x years being this unbearable horror that we are seeing. “The peace conference has to be the end of that and the beginning of a viable Palestinian state.”

Spain wants to lead the peace conference initiative and that is why Sánchez has begun his mandate with a trip to Israel, Palestine and Egypt. The President of the Government wants to take advantage of his stay in the territory to advance the recognition that the Executive wants to make of the Palestinian state and which was the first announcement of Sánchez's investiture speech. Despite the work of diplomacy and the Spanish position, condemning the Hamas attack but at the same time asking for a ceasefire, Sánchez has two people in his Executive who have not condemned Hamas. According to Albares, this does not undermine the leadership to which Spain aspires, because “our main partners know the Spanish position”, despite the discordant voices within the Government.

The Dutch elect this Wednesday a Parliament that will surely be very fragmented. The Kingdom of the Netherlands does not have an absolute majority, but it is not even close to the imperfect two-party system of Spain. Its political system is so open and plural that although the Chamber has 150 seats, none of the formations that are presented will exceed 30 deputies, according to the polls.

There are four candidates who start as favorites, but none has a considerable advantage over the others, so the election is still completely open. Everything points to a conservative government that includes the extreme right, which even stands out as a possible list with the most votes in the latest polls.. But a pact from the left to the center is also possible.

Surveys in recent days show slight changes compared to recent weeks. The combination of the latest known polls, according to Peilingwijzer, shows that Geert Wilders' far-right is rising after moderating his speech until he is slightly ahead (26-30 seats); the ruling Popular Party for Freedom and Democracy remains strong but falls to second position (22-28 deputies); The social democrats of Frans Timmermans rise, although from third place, precisely because of the fear of the radical right (21-25), and the surprise of these elections falls slightly, the New Social Contract of Pieter Omtzigt, a party with only three months of existence. life (19-25 seats). Even so, the party with the most votes does not have to later hold the leadership of the Executive.. Everything will depend on the game of majorities and the agreements that are reached after a negotiation that is expected to be long and difficult.

26 parties are running for the November 22 elections and the current Parliament welcomes representatives of 17 different parties (the Spanish Congress is considered fragmented and has 11 parties). For all this, the Dutch know that today's elections may only be the beginning of months of negotiations until a Government composed, probably, of three, four or five different parties is born.. In the last legislature, the prime minister took 271 days to close a coalition of four political parties.

Furthermore, and for the first time in 13 years, the head of the Government since 2010, Mark Rutte, is not running for office.. Its Executive exploded last summer after disagreements between the four partners of the Government coalition over immigration and asylum policy and after a scandal of institutional discrimination against thousands of immigrants who were falsely accused of having received aid. improper.

The campaign has been more tense than usual in Holland. Finally, on Monday night they brutally attacked Thierry Baudet, leader of another far-right party, Forum for Democracy (FvD), which could obtain between three and five deputies.. Baudet was hit severely on the head with a beer bottle in a cafe in the north of the Netherlands during a campaign event.. Fortunately, the candidate from the minority party is fine.

Below, we detail the most important candidates in Wednesday's elections and their electoral possibilities:

POPULAR PARTY FOR FREEDOM AND DEMOCRACY

Rutte's party remains the favorite, although by a narrow margin and in tough competition with the extreme right. The People's Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD) presents as its candidate the acting Minister of Justice, Dilan Yesilgöz, who was born in Turkey and arrived in the Netherlands as an illegal immigrant at the age of eight.. Now and as a candidate, her main electoral demand is the tightening of migration and asylum policies.. His party defends the free market when it comes to the economy and is liberal on social issues.

In addition to containing immigration, his electoral program emphasizes the fight against drug trafficking and organized crime, proposes the construction of four nuclear power plants so that the Netherlands is less dependent on the outside world and wants to limit the increase in rent prices.

Yesilgöz could be the first female prime minister of the Netherlands, but she does not make a statement about it. In recent months, he has tried to distance himself from former Prime Minister Rutte with a tougher and more right-wing profile than his predecessor in the party.

Pieter Omtzigt, leader of the New Social Contract, greets a supporter at a campaign event in Diemen on November 18. VINCENT JANNINK EFE

NEW SOCIAL CONTRACT

A formation that was formed in August has become the surprise of this campaign by rising to the first four places. The New Social Contract (NSC) bases its success on the popularity of its leader, Pieter Omtzigt. This Christian Democrat has become the fashionable politician in the Netherlands after he was the one who denounced in Parliament the plot of institutional discrimination by the Tax Agency against low-income immigrants who had received aid. Then, he left his party, which was part of Rutte's government coalition, and just three months ago he decided to head a new political formation, the New Social Contract (NSC), also inspired by Christian Democrats.

His attractive proposal consists of a thorough reform of the Dutch State and the Administration, something very difficult to achieve because any Executive that is formed will be made up of a minimum of three parties that will have to negotiate a common program.

His voters, according to the polling companies, come from both the right and the moderate left and he could become the big surprise of these elections, although this week's polls give him a slight drop compared to the previous week and place him in fourth place.

FREEDOM PARTY

To the right of both formations is the extreme right, the Party for Freedom (PVV) of Geert Wilders, with which both the liberals of VVD and the Christian Democrats of the New Social Contract could agree.. In recent weeks, Wilders has moderated his speech in the style of Argentine Javier Milei, both to attract moderate votes from the Dutch right and to stop scaring the electorate further to the left, which could be benefiting the social democrats.. His program highlights the ban on mosques, Islamic schools, the Koran (which he compares to Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf) and the veil in public buildings.

In recent weeks he has had less impact on the most radical part of his proposals and has clarified that compliance with these points would not be insurmountable conditions to be a partner in a future coalition government.

His preferred coalition would be with the VVD, the NCS and the Peasant Movement.

Frans Timmermans, candidate of the Socialists and Greens, at a rally last Saturday. RAMON VAN FLYMEN AFP

SOCIAL DEMOCRATS AND GREEN

The fourth politician in the running is the former vice president of the European Commission Frans Timmermans, who heads a coalition of social democrats and greens that in the Netherlands has been compared to the Spanish model of the PSOE and Sumar: the PvdA (social democrats) and GroenLinks (greens ). Timmermans achieved this pre-electoral pact with the intention of putting himself ahead of his center and center-right competitors, but he has not achieved it.

Timmermans himself has been highlighting in recent days that he is the only candidate with the possibility of leading a Government capable of stopping the extreme right, in a strategy similar to that of Pedro Sánchez in Spain.. For this reason and according to the different polls, his coalition would be gaining votes in the final stretch of the campaign, subtracting votes from other minority left-wing candidates who have no chance of exceeding 10 seats.

The former European commissioner assured this Tuesday that his bloc “has a good chance of emerging as the largest in these elections” and promised the left-wing groups affected by the vote useful to the PvdA-GroenLinks that “he will not abandon them” if he wins.. “But if we are not the largest party, you will have the same problem as me: the right and the extreme right will win,” he stated, according to Efe.

PEASANT MOVEMENT

Finally, the Peasant Movement (BBB), which won the regional and Senate elections last March with 20% of the votes, seems to have deflated. Polls now give him between four and seven seats that could be decisive in shoring up a right-wing government.

POLITICAL PUZZLE COMPLEX

The complex Dutch political puzzle is completed by almost 10 other formations that can have between one and 10 seats and that would be key to tipping the majority to one side or the other of the balance.

The Dutch Government has historically been very important in the European Union. Rutte used to show a position that was often inflexible with the countries of the South, led the so-called frugal countries (the Netherlands, Sweden, Denmark and Austria) and pushed to impose austerity policies on Spain, Portugal, Greece and Italy.. In fact, one of Rutte's nicknames in Brussels was 'Mister No'. Although in his country he is better known as 'Mister Teflon', for his resistance to many and multiple crises until his resignation in July 2023.

For all these reasons, the next Executive in The Hague has more importance than it might seem for the interests of southern Europe, and Spain in particular, especially when the aid from the Recovery and Resilience Plan ends and the EU begins to mark more restrictive policies to stop the economic slowdown.