BUENOS AIRES – Spanish Deputy Prime Minister Maria Teresa Fernandez de la Vega said on Sunday in Buenos Aires that the goal of her lightning visit to Argentina was to push for the resumption of negotiations for an association between the European Union and Latin America.

“It’s a justified trip,” De la Vega said in a meeting with Spanish reporters, adding that it was “a very important trip in a limited time to adopt specific, very important decisions of a strategic nature for Ibero-America, for Europe, for Argentina and for Spain.”

The deputy prime minister rejected criticisms of her trip to Argentina made by the Spanish opposition and a group of relatives of the crew of the Alakrana, the Spanish tuna fishing boat that was hijacked in the Indian Ocean.

Fernandez de la Vega, who had suspended the trip to Argentina on two earlier occasions, will meet on Monday with President Cristina Fernandez to discuss with her the need to take advantage of the fact that both Spain and Argentina will hold the rotating presidencies of their respective trade blocs, the EU and Mercosur, in 2010.

Starting in January, Spain will preside over the EU and Argentina over Mercosur, and “this is an extraordinarily important opportunity to relaunch Ibero-American-European Union relations because the interests of countries and regions coincide as never before,” the Spanish vice premier said.

“It’s urgent” for Spain to make decisions of a strategic nature in relations between Mercosur and the European bloc and “there is much to do in a short time,” Fernandez de la Vega said.

“That is the reason not to postpone something that demands the making of rapid and important political decisions,” she added.

Fernandez de la Vega met Sunday at the Spanish Embassy with members of the local Spanish community and presented five passports to grandchildren of Spaniards who fall under the Citizens Abroad Law, the so-called “grandchildren’s law,” among them two great granddaughters of Mariano Gomez, the last head of the Spanish Supreme Court during the Republic.

In Argentina, which has the largest Spanish community outside of Spain according to official estimates, there have been 31,000 requests for recognition of Spanish nationality for grandchildren of Spanish emigrants and so far 4,600 passports have been awarded by Madrid.

Fernandez de la Vega will wrap up her visit to the South American country on Monday after meeting with the Argentine president.