Chile’s President has begun his first official visit to Spain since taking office with a schedule built around two leading figures of the Spanish Right.
José Antonio Kast was due to land at about 1pm today at Torrejón de Ardoz air base, east of Madrid, and head to a hotel in the capital for talks with Vox leader Santiago Abascal. The two men have been political allies for years.
Kast was then expected at the Real Casa de Correos, seat of the Madrid regional government, where regional President Isabel Díaz Ayuso would present him with the International Medal of the Community of Madrid. It is the regional executive’s highest honour for internationally prominent figures.
Previous recipients include Argentina’s President Javier Milei, who received it in June 2024 amid a diplomatic row between Buenos Aires and the Spanish Government, and Ecuador’s President Daniel Noboa.
Kast, founder of Chile’s Republican Party, took office on March 11 after winning the December 14, 2025 run-off with more than 58 per cent of the vote against Communist Party candidate Jeannette Jara. He campaigned chiefly on crime and illegal migration, pledging to deport undocumented migrants.
As president-elect, he toured Europe in February, stopping in Madrid to see Abascal before he addressed conservative MEPs in the European Parliament and held talks with Hungary’s Viktor Orbán and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni.
On September 3-4, Kast hosted in Santiago the fifth regional meeting of the Madrid Forum, a Vox initiative set up to coordinate opposition to the Left across Latin America. Abascal stayed away from that gathering to confront Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez in Congress over the Ceuta invasion, according to Chilean outlet The Clinic.
The visit came in the run-up to Spain’s general election on November 29, which Sánchez called on October 5 after Congress rejected his government’s housing decrees. Polls published in early October put the conservative People’s Party (PP) in the lead, with Vox on about 18 per cent.
It also came days after two high-speed trains collided near Urda, in Toledo province south of Madrid, on October 28, killing at least 69 people according to Spanish media.
Kast was due to fly to Rome on November 3 for talks with Meloni and to be received by Pope Leo XIV at the Apostolic Palace the following day. It would be his first meeting with the pontiff, who was set to begin a tour of Uruguay, Argentina and Peru on November 6.
He would then return to Madrid for the 30th Ibero-American Summit, hosted by the Spanish Government, before flying back to Chile on November 5.
