MESSI’S FOND FAREWELL
Argentina 10, West Africa 0 was the final score after two friendly matches culminating in football superstar Lionel Messi ’s last appearance with the national team last Tuesday, winding up a 22-year career including the 2022 Qatar World Cup and two World Cup finals. Following last weekend’s 7-0 whitewash of a hapless Burkina Faso missing their coach and much of the team stranded in Morocco (yet another scandal for the Argentine Football Association, or AFA), Messi contributed a penalty to the 3-0 triumph over Benin, his 126th goal in the 208 matches of his extraordinary career. But the mass ovations and the floods of tears were the real story of the night. Just before the Tuesday match at River Plate’s Monumental Stadium (sponsored by Sancor Seguros, who made sure everybody realised with their drone show), Messi was honoured with the title of Doctor Honoris Causa by UBA University of Buenos Aires while on the next day ex-legislator Roberto García Moritán presented a bill to the City Legislature to replace the image of Eva Perón with one of Messi on the wall of the Human Capital Ministry in the 9 de Julio thoroughfare.
MALVINAS STAYS IN NEWS
The British government last weekend confirmed that the licences for companies seeking to exploit offshore oil and gas around the Malvinas required the final authorisation of Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband. Over 60 companies have already been sanctioned for unauthorised operations around the Malvinas by the Argentine government as violating Law 26,659 with the Anglo-Israeli Sea Lion project (Rockhopper and Navitas) in the forefront – Rockhopper have announced that they would continue to move ahead. Also last weekend, President Javier Milei celebrated that the United States multinational giant Halliburton Company would not be servicing the Sea Lion project north of the islands with reserves estimated at 1.7 billion barrels of crude and due to start drilling next year.
RECORD LUJAN PILGRIMAGE
In the month before the papal visit the 52nd youth pilgrimage from Liniers to Luján last weekend was an all-time record with some 2.5 million participants, topping the two million in 2013, the year Argentine Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio became Pope Francis. The 60-kilometre march under the slogan “Mother [Mary], in your embrace we recognise our fraternity” was accompanied by a vast logistical operation involving 6,000 volunteers with field hospitals, ambulances, medical attention, chemical toilets, police escorts, water cisterns and food stands.
INDUSTRY’S (RELATIVE) PICK-UP
Argentina’s manufacturing industry improved 1.9 percent in August from the previous month, the INDEC national statistics bureau announced Wednesday, but remains 3.2 percent below the levels of August 2025 with industrial activity contracting 2.7 percent in the first two-thirds of this year. Ooil refineries, chemicals, rubber and plastics led the recovery, 3.6 up from July with an accumulated growth of four percent. Food and beverages picked up 1.7 percent from July, which did not suffice to prevent a year-on-year decline of 0.4 percent. A rebound of 9.8 percent from July did not save machine tools from plunging 19.3 percent so far this year, even worse than the hard-hit textiles sector’s accumulated loss of 16.3 percent with a further dip of 0.3 percent in August. The auto industry improved 2.4 percent from July but still carries a year-on-year decline of 6.6 percent.
WE’LL ALWAYS HAVE PARIS
Following the conclusion of Argentina Week in Paris, Argentina’s Ambassador to France Ian Sielecki reported investment announcements to the tune of US$27 billion as the result of the roadshow, affirming that it had placed the country “in the centre” of European business and attributing its success to the “serious macroeconomics and worldwide magnetism of President Javier Milei,” accompanied by “an unprecedented 13 governors." Some 500 European CEOs had heard out Milei and Economy Minister Luis Caputo, Sielecki added, as did French President Emmanuel Macron for two hours. Of the US$27 billion in investment projects, at least US$22.4 billion correspond to Vaca Muerta shale.
NEW ENVOYS
Following their return from Paris, President Javier Milei and Foreign Minister Pablo Quirno last Monday received the credentials of the new ambassadors of Belgium, Ireland, Finland and Israel – respectively, Christian de Lannoy, Olive María Hempenstall, Veikko Roobert Kiljunen and Ahuva Spieler Reshef. Milei also celebrated the “grand triumph” of the far-right presidential candidate Flávio Bolsonaro in the first round of the previous day’s Brazilian general elections and confirmed an October 19 trip to Spain.
CRACKDOWN ON DRUNKEN DRIVING
City Mayor Jorge Macri last Wednesday sent to the City Legislature a comprehensive reform of the Misdemeanours Code, including fines topping seven million pesos for drunken driving, sanctions of up to 58 million pesos for illegal peddling and up to three months detention for recidivist trapitos (those seeking to extort money from drivers by wiping their windscreens and “guarding” their parked cars). Macri boasted of having ended impunity for minor criminals, including violent demonstrators who toss Molotov cocktails at protests. All ages over 14 are held responsible for misdemeanours.
STUDENT PROTEST
University students stormed the Palacio Pizzurno (formerly home to the Education Ministry until the portfolio was downgraded by the current administration) on Wednesday afternoon to protest the government stalling on the University Financing Law and were forcibly evicted by Federal Police officers amid much jostling. A fifth Federal University March converging on Congress merging with other protests against the Land Law and in support of the handicapped has been announced for next Thursday.
US ANTI-DRUG BOOSTER
Washington has decided to install a regional unit of its State Department’s Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs (INL) here in Argentina with a funding of US$13.35 million as part of an escalation of the war against increasingly powerful drug-trafficking rings, multiplying INL aid to the region tenfold. National Security Minister Alejandra Monteoliva was quick to hail this initiative by Argentina’s "strategic partners" in the United States against an organised crime which "does not recognise frontiers."
BAKERY LOCKOUT
The traditional artisan bakery chain Pandanés called a complete halt to commercial operations at the start of this month, locking out their 150 employees by changing the locks at their 25 bakeries and announcing that they would be legally filing for bankruptcy. The firm announced that they had run out of funds to pay wages after the failure of salvage bids to raise fresh capital, ruling out any severance on top of September pay. Pandanés had already called in the receivers last November, arguing that recession had more than halved their consumer market amid rising operational costs while accumulating over 58 million pesos in bouncing cheques. The sector as a whole feels itself in crisis.
BRAZIL VOTE: ARGENTINE FOOTNOTES
The Brazilian electorate of 158.7 million, of whom 79 percent voted last Sunday, giving the far right’s Flávio Bolsonaro a two-point edge (47 to 45 percent) over incumbent President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva ahead of the October 25 run-off, included some 70,000 Brazilians resident in Argentina (11,873 in this city). On the last day of campaigning Lula flashed a black “Las Malvinas son Argentinas” T-shirt while aboard a Partido Trabalhista caravan in Rio de Janeiro.
FORTUNA PRIZES
The 21st edition of the Premios Fortuna 2026 prizes given annually to top figures of the business world by Fortuna magazine (directed by Ceferino Reato) was held in the Bolsa stock exchange on Tuesday evening with the notable presence of ex-president Mauricio Macri and Senator Patricia Bullrich as speakers, following Reato and Grupo Perfil CEO Jorge Fontevecchia, who founded the magazine following the 2001-2002 economic meltdown. Fontevecchia expressed his admiration for the survival capacities of Argentine businessmen, hoping that they could be used to “transform Argentina.” Macri yearned for “transparent ground rules” and “more institutions and more infrastructure” while Bullrich highlighted the RIGI incentive scheme for major investments. Supermarket tycoon Alfredo Coto was chosen as businessman of the year with prizes awarded to specific sectors, including Aeropuertos Argentina for infrastructure and Eduardo Elzstain for real estate. The talking-point was undoubtedly the appearance of Bullrich at a Perfil event – another sign of the senator’s growing independence, given President Javier Milei’s order that no-one speak to Fontevecchia or journalists from his companies.
AFA ACQUITTALS
Campana federal judge Adrián González Charvay last Thursday acquitted 13 relatives and partners of the controversial AFA Argentine Football Association treasurer Pablo Toviggino on charges of misallocating AFA funds on the grounds that the case against them was based on nothing more than press hypotheses. Both Toviggino and AFA President Claudio ‘Chiqui’ Tapia (whose arrest was requested in this case by the prosecutor Pedro Simón) have previously indicated a preference for having the cases against them tried in Campana.
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