Orsi to meet Sanchez, Sheinbaum and Ramaphosa in Barcelona at multilateralism summit
The summit is the fourth edition of a process that began in New York in 2024 and continued in Santiago de Chile in July 2025, when Orsi participated alongside Sánchez
Uruguayan President Yamandú Orsi will travel to Barcelona on Friday to attend the fourth Democracy Always summit, a gathering of 19 heads of state convened by Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, where the Uruguayan leader will focus his remarks on the value of multilateralism, according to Foreign Minister Mario Lubetkin.
The trip will be brief: Orsi departs Friday and returns Sunday morning. His schedule is concentrated on Saturday, when he will take part in the multilateral meeting and hold confirmed bilateral talks with Sánchez and Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum. A meeting with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa is also expected. Orsi will additionally visit the Barcelona Supercomputing Center.
Other confirmed leaders include Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Colombian President Gustavo Petro, Barbadian Prime Minister Mia Mottley and European Council President António Costa. Former Chilean President Gabriel Boric is also expected, pending authorization from his country’s Congress.
The summit is the fourth edition of a process that began in New York in 2024 and continued in Santiago de Chile in July 2025, when Orsi participated alongside Sánchez, Lula, Petro and then-President Boric. For us this is not a matter of words but a process that started in New York, continued in Santiago and will now have a third chapter, Lubetkin explained. He will accompany the president. The gathering is framed around shared concern over challenges facing democracies worldwide.
Orsi decided not to attend a second event taking place in parallel in Barcelona: the Global Progressive Mobilisation, a party-political platform convened by Spain’s Socialist Workers’ Party that will bring together left-leaning international figures. Instead, Frente Amplio president Fernando Pereira will lead the Uruguayan delegation at that forum.
The distinction between the two events was key to defusing a dispute with the opposition. Colorado Party senator Andrés Ojeda had called Orsi’s potential attendance at the progressive gathering extremely inconvenient, arguing that it was not part of the duties a president must carry out in international policy. Once Orsi’s decision to limit his participation to the heads-of-state summit became clear, the Senate voted unanimously on Tuesday to authorize his absence from the country, without debate.
Orsi will not attend ceremonies marking the anniversary of the Landing of the Thirty-Three Orientals, as he will depart for Montevideo on Sunday morning.
