Sánchez travels to Washington this Thursday for his meeting with Biden at the White House

The head of government, Pedro Sánchez, travels to Washington this Thursday to meet with the President of the United States, Joe Biden, in order to strengthen the bilateral relationship and advance agreements such as the one on land contaminated with plutonium due to the nuclear accident in Palomares (Almería) in 1966.

Sánchez will travel to the US capital after presiding over an extraordinary Council of Ministers on the drought in Madrid, and his first act in Washington will be today at the residence of the Spanish ambassador.

There, he will take part in the award ceremony of the Grand Cross of the Order of Isabella the Catholic to the former president of the United States House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi.

It was on April 25 when the Government agreed to grant this distinction to the American politician, a member of President Biden's Democratic Party, for “breaking the glass ceilings” by being the first woman to become Speaker of the House. of Representatives since its foundation.

It will be on Friday when Biden will receive Sánchez in the Oval Office of the White House, a meeting that the Government hopes will serve to consolidate bilateral relations and close agreements that have crystallized in recent months such as the negotiation for the United States to take land contaminated with plutonium from the Palomares nuclear accident.

Prior to that meeting, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares, and the Secretary of State of the United States, Antony Blinken, held a meeting in Washington this Wednesday in which they expressed their political will to resolve this issue, which was found, as they explained, in technical discussions.

Dovecote cleaning

The Spanish government has asked Washington to fulfill the commitment made in 2015 to bring the plutonium-contaminated sands to a Nevada desert 57 years ago.

“First of all, we recognize the importance of this issue,” Blinken said at a press conference with Albares, in which he stated that negotiations to clean up the area will resume soon.

For his part, Albares assured that there is a common will to resolve this matter, although he admitted that it is a complex issue and there are still aspects to be resolved.

The Palomares nuclear accident occurred on January 17, 1966, when two United States Air Force aircraft collided, causing the detachment and fall of four thermonuclear bombs.

In total, it is about 50,000 cubic meters of soil contaminated with half a kilo of plutonium and that makes the radioactive stigma last in Cuevas de Almanzora, the Almería municipality to which Palomares and Villaricos belongs, more than half a century later.

The war in Ukraine will be another central issue in Sánchez's meeting with Biden, and both will also address issues such as the climate emergency, attacks on democratic institutions such as those experienced in the United States and Brazil, and the strengthening of the relationship of the European Union. with the North American country.

Sánchez will share with Biden the priorities of the semester of the European presidency and will seek synergies, especially in the framework of the EU-Latin America and Caribbean summit in July.

Another topic on the agenda will be the agreement signed at the end of March for Spain and Canada to welcome Latin American migrants who usually emigrate to the United States and whose applications will now be processed in centers that Washington wants to build in Colombia and Guatemala.

The meeting comes just one day after the so-called Title 42 ceases to apply, which has allowed migrants who crossed into the United States to be automatically deported to Mexico without giving them the opportunity to request asylum and with the argument that it was necessary to isolate the country. due to the covid-19 pandemic.