The Ibero-American Summit starts without Sánchez, who has not arrived in time for the inauguration

Finally, in Santo Domingo there will be twelve heads of state from the 22 countries present

SANTO DOMINGO, March 25. (From the special envoy of EUROPA PRESS, Leyre Guijo) -

The XXVIII Ibero-American Summit has started this Friday afternoon in the Dominican Republic with an inaugural act at the Ozama Fortress, in which the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, has not been present, who has not managed to arrive on time from Brussels, where he has attended prior to the European Council.

However, Spain has been represented at the start of the event by King Felipe VI, who always attends the Ibero-American summits. The president, who has traveled accompanied by his wife, Begoña Gómez, has joined the dinner that the Dominican president, Luis Abinader, has offered to the attendees.

Sánchez's delay has meant that the Portuguese Prime Minister, Antonio Costa, and the EU's High Representative for Foreign Policy, Josep Borrell, who were traveling on the president's plane, did not arrive on time either.

Nor has the president of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, arrived for the opening ceremony, although he does plan to attend the summit, where there will ultimately be twelve heads of state in attendance.

Finally, the Venezuelan president, Nicolás Maduro, will not be there, who at the last moment has delegated his chancellor, Yvan Gil, and to date has not attended any Ibero-American Summit despite having been in office for ten years.

The Brazilian president, Luiz Inazio Lula da Silva, has also not traveled to Santo Domingo since he has planned a trip to China that, however, has had to be postponed for a day due to pneumonia.

Other less unusual absences in this type of forum have been that of the presidents of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, and that of Nicaragua, Daniel Ortega.

They have also been joined by the President of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele; the president of Peru, Dina Boluarte; the one from Guatemala, Alejandro Giammatei; the one from Panama, Laurentino Cortizo, and the one from Costa Rica, Rodrigo Chaves.

After the inaugural ceremony, which closed with fireworks after a musical performance, the presidents and foreign ministers who have traveled to replace the presidents of their country will hold a dinner.

The summit itself will start on Saturday morning at the Convention Center of the Dominican Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The leaders will hold two plenary sessions, one in the morning and the other in the afternoon, during which they will speak for about ten minutes.

Likewise, a lunch is planned at the National Palace of the Republic that will be held under the so-called 'retreat' format, that is, the heads of state will go alone without any adviser, in order to deal more intimately with the issues they want to address. .

A total of three documents will come out of the meeting that the foreign ministers have agreed on in the morning meeting, as reported by the Ibero-American General Secretariat (SEGIB) in a statement.

The special communiqué that was intended to be approved defending a fairer, more flexible and equitable national financial architecture that would allow the countries of the region, in many cases of middle income, to have the necessary resources to face economic recovery, will not be included among them.