The Diplomat in Spain

 Spanish Consul in Edinburgh, Ricardo Martínez./ Photo: MAEC

Luis Ayllón. 20/07/2018

The current Consul General of Spain in Edinburgh, Ricardo Martínez Vázquez, will be the next Ambassador to Germany, replacing María Victoria Morera, according to sources consulted by The Diplomat.

Martínez (Sevilla, 1958) was already appointed to the Embassy in Bonn, then capital of the German Federal Republic, between 1987 and 1990, which allowed him to closely follow the process of unification of Germany.

He holds a degree in Law from the University of Seville and postgraduate studies at the Human Rights Directorate of the Council of Europe, at the René Cassin Institute in Strasbourg (France) and at the International Law Academy in The Hague (Netherlands).

He entered the Diplomatic Career in 1986 and has been assigned to the General Directorate of International Economic Relations, the Diplomatic Information Office (OID) and the Spanish Agency for International Cooperation. In the latter, from 2000 to 2008 he held position of Deputy General Director of Cooperation with Eastern Europe and Asia; Deputy General Director of Cooperation with Mediterranean and Eastern Europe Countries and General Director of Cooperation with Africa, Asia and Eastern Europe. Between 2008 and 2012 he was General Director of Casa África.

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The substitute of Victoria Morera was destined to Bonn during German unification

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Abroad, he has also been assigned to the Permanent Representation of Spain before the International Organizations based in Geneva and at the Embassy of Spain in Panama. He was also Consul General in São Paulo (Brazil) and since August 2017 he held the post of Consul General in Edinburgh.

The position of Spanish ambassador in Berlin is one of the most delicate at present for the socialist government due to the interlocution with Angela Merkel’s coalition government, made up of conservative and socialist, as well as to the presence of the former President of the Catalan Generalitat, Carles Puigdemont, although after Judge Pablo Llarena’s decision to withdraw the European arrest warrant against him, it is very possible that he left German soil to settle back in Belgium.

The independence challenge will not be alien to the new ambassador, since in recent months he has had to follow very closely the presence of the former Catalan councilor Clara Ponsatí, who fled to Edinburgh and was recently forced to warn the Scottish authorities when they spoke of the supposed «right of self-determination» of Catalonia, after a meeting between the Generalitat’s President, Joaquim Torra, and the Scottish Prime Minister, Nicola Sturgeon.