The Diplomat in Spain

Cristina Gallach./ Photo: @cristinagallach

The Diplomat. 07/07/2018

The journalist Cristina Gallach will direct the High Commissioner for the Agenda 2030, a body created by the current Government within the La Moncloa organization to coordinate the actions related to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDO) and which will have the rank of Undersecretary and will be chaired directly by the chief executive himself, Pedro Sánchez.

Gallach, appointed yesterday by the Council of Ministers, has extensive professional experience as a journalist, since he was correspondent of the EFE news agency in Moscow and in Brussels, editor of El Periódico de Catalunya, correspondent in the United States of Avui newspaper and TVE reporter in Barcelona.

Apart from that, she was well known by informants from all over the world during the decade in which she acted as a spokesperson for Javier Solana, first in the General Secretariat of NATO and later as head of Foreign Policy of the European Union, until the end of 2009.

In 2010 she was responsible for Communication of the Spanish Presidency of the EU and since that same year she was head of the Public Relations Unit in the Information and Communication Directorate of the Council of the European Union.

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His appointment comes after the approval of the Plan of Action and on the eve of the examination at the UN

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In 2011 she aspired to the position of Director of External Relations of UN-Women, but did not find the support of the Government of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, who preferred to support the former Minister of Equality Bibiana Aído.

Between 2015 and 2017, Cristina Gallach served as deputy general secretary of the UN for Communication and Public Information, which made her the Spanish woman who reached the highest position in the organization. From that position, as recalled yesterday by the Government, she directed the design and execution of global, regional and local communication of major current issues, with special emphasis on the 2030 Agenda and the Paris Agreement.

The Council of Ministers approved last Friday the Action Plan for the Implementation of the 2030 Agenda: Towards a Spanish Strategy for Sustainable Development, in which all the ministerial departments, the autonomous communities, local entities and civil society organizations participated.

The Action Plan will serve as support for the National Voluntary Exam of the United Nations, to which Spain will submit on July 18 (with the participation of the Minister of Foreign Affairs, EU and Cooperation, Josep Borrel) and in which the capacities of the country in order to meet the SDGs.