Spain complains about disappearance of U.S. White House Spanish-language website

Spain’s foreign minister Alfonso Dastis complained Monday morning about the disappearance of the Spanish-language U.S. White House website and Twitter account.

Message on the White House’s Spanish-language website.

“We regret that the Spanish version of the website has been deleted. It doesn’t seem like a good idea given the fact that 52 million Spanish speakers live in the U.S.,” Alfonso Dastis told reporters. “If this is the decision of President Trump’s administration, I think it’s a bad one.”

Dastis added that the English-language site and Twitter account remained active.

The White House at first responded that a decision had not been made about the status of the Spanish accounts, saying that the staff was in the process of conducting “major housekeeping” to websites.

Later on Monday, however, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer said that the Trump administration is working on getting the Spanish-language site back up and running.

“We are continuing to build out the website, both in the issue areas and then overall,” Spicer said. “We’ve got the IT folks working overtime right now to get all of that up to speed. Trust me, it’s just going to take a little bit more time, but we’re working piece by piece to get that done.”

In his morning remarks, Dastis said that the world’s hispanic population is watching closely to see how the new Trump administration engages with the Spanish-speaking population. “We are looking for signals of how we will be treated and the elimination of the website is not a good sign.”