The Diplomat in Spain

Juan López-Doriga será el nuevo embajador en México./ Imagen: YouTube

Luis Ayllón. 25/08/2018

The Council of Ministers appointed eight new ambassadors yesterday -four of them women- in as many other countries: Portugal, the Netherlands, Mexico, Nicaragua, Cameroon, Namibia, Cape Verde and Sudan.

Specifically, as announced by The Diplomat, the new ambassador to Portugal will be Marta Betanzos, who will replace Eduardo Gutiérrez Sáenz de Buruaga, who had been in office for just over a year. Marta Betanzos is currently Public Diplomacy advisor in the General Directorate of Diplomatic Information and was the first Ambassador of Spain to Mali, as well as Spain’s permanent representative to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), based in Vienna.

For his part, Juan López-Doriga will be the new ambassador to Mexico, replacing Luis Fernández-Cid, whose departure had been planned for some time, although until the entry of the new Government, the person chosen to relieve him was Ramón Gil-Casares. López-Doriga has been the ambassador to Tunisia for the last four and a half years, and previously, he was ambassador in Guatemala and director of the Spanish Agency for International Cooperation for Development (Aecid).

In the Netherlands, the new ambassador will be María Jesús Alonso, appointment that had already been foreseen by the previous Executive. She has been Ambassador to Cameroon and Ghana and since September 2017 she has been an adviser in the Cabinet of the Undersecretary of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

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Six of those named had been chosen by the previous Executive

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Mar Fernández-Palacios has been appointed to take charge of the Embassy in Nicaragua, at a particularly sensitive moment in that country. The new ambassador is currently Deputy General Director for Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean, so she has closely followed the situation in Nicaragua in recent months.

The fourth woman named yesterday is Dolores Ríos, who will be in charge of the Embassy in Cape Verde. She has been second in command in several embassies and has been Deputy General Director of Cooperation with Sub-Saharan Africa and Asia. She was currently an advisor for Parliamentary Affairs in the Cabinet of the Secretary of State for the European Union.

The new ambassador in Cameroon will be Ramón María Moreno, who, from April 2012 until a year ago, made a delicate management at the head of Casa Asia, which is based in Barcelona. He has been «number two» at the Embassy of Spain in India and has served on several occasions in Protocol, where he was currently stationed.

Following in Africa, to head the Embassy in Namibia has been named Antonio Javier Romera, who has served at the Permanent Representations before NATO and the EU and is currently Deputy Director General of Foreign Affairs and Trade Affairs of the European Union.

Finally, the new Ambassador to Sudan will be Alberto José Ucelay, who has been Deputy General Consul in Jerusalem and advisor to the European Union’s special representative for the Middle East Peace Process. In addition, he has also held the second headquarters in the Embassies in Morocco, in Kuwait and in Tunisia.