King Felipe of Spain appears to have helped thaw frosty relations with Mexico by acknowledging abuses carried out by his country during its conquest.

In doing so he has reopened a fierce debate over the colonisation of the New World.

The arrival of Spaniards in America from the late 15th Century spread Christianity and the Spanish language across the continent, while also causing the death of many thousands of indigenous people through military action and disease.

During a visit to an exhibition dedicated to indigenous women in Mexico at Madrid's National Archaeological Museum, King Felipe said there had been a lot of abuse during the conquest of the territory that would become Mexico.

There are things that, when we study them, with our present-day criteria, our values, obviously cannot make us feel proud, he added on Monday.

The king made his informal observations while commenting on the exhibition in the presence of the Mexican ambassador to Spain, Quirino Ordaz.

President Claudia Sheinbaum of Mexico has welcomed the comments as a major step forward on an issue that has caused diplomatic friction between the two countries in recent years.

One could say that it is not everything we would have wanted, but it is a gesture of reconciliation by the king in terms of what we were talking about: an acknowledgement of excesses, exterminations that happened during the Spaniards' arrival, she said.

The year 2021 marked the 500th anniversary of the fall of Tenochtitlán, the site of modern-day Mexico City and the capital of the Aztec empire, at the hands of Hernán Cortés and his small army.

His remarks mark the first time a Spanish monarch has publicly acknowledged abuses during the country's colonial era, which has drawn both praise and criticism from various political factions.

The political right in Spain has reacted skeptically, with the leader of the conservative People's Party (PP), Alberto Núñez Feijóo, warning against looking at historical events out of context.

As the conversation continues, the implications of these remarks for Spain-Mexico relations and historical dialogues remain to be fully realized.