After more than six months of debate, dispute, and a series of high-profile public forums, Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s constitutional energy reform is heading for a mid-April showdown in the Mexican Congress.

One of three major reforms the president hopes to pass in the second half of his administration, the reforma eléctrica, as it is known, seeks to strengthen the role of the public energy sector, curb the abuses of companies that have gamed the system to their advantage, and, crucially, nationalize the nation’s lithium stores together with other strategic minerals. Although it stops short of taking electricity production fully into state control, it remains a crucial step on Mexico’s path toward regaining energy sovereignty.

And right on cue, foreign powers with energy interests in Mexico have continued to ratchet up their opposition. Juan Fernández Trigo, the secretary of state for Ibero-America in the government of Pedro Sánchez, warned that Spain will “react very clearly” against the new law.