MEXICO CITY, March 19 (Reuters) - Mexico has invited Spain's King Felipe VI to attend the World Cup opening match, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said on Thursday.
Mexico's government representative for the 2026 FIFA World Cup Gabriela Cuevas sent invitations to all the countries with which Mexico has diplomatic relations, and among those invited was the king of Spain, Sheinbaum told a daily press conference.
The monarch's invitation was initially reported by Spanish media and emerged after Felipe VI unexpectedly acknowledged abuses in his country's colonial past on Monday.
At its height in the 16th to 18th centuries, Spain ruled one of the largest empires in world history, spanning five continents including much of Central and Latin America, and practiced forced labor, land expropriation and violence against Indigenous people.
The king's comments came shortly after a speech by U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio in Munich last month, in which Rubio criticized a decline of "great Western empires" and said Washington did not want allies "shackled by guilt and shame."
Sheinbaum said on Tuesday that the king's comments were a conciliatory gesture on the king's part, but "it wasn't everything we would have wanted."
Sheinbaum did not invite the Spanish king to her 2024 inauguration after the monarch declined to apologise for colonial-era abuses.
(Reporting by Raul Cortes and Aida Pelaez-Fernandez; Editing by Kylie Madry and Sarah Morland)
