The Diplomat in Spain

The Queen during her trip to El Salvador in 2015./ Photo: Casa de S.M. el Rey

The Diplomat. 05/05/2018

The Secretary of State for International Cooperation and for Ibero-America and the Caribbean, Fernando García Casas, announced yesterday that Queen Letizia will carry out, between May 20 and 24, “a trip of cooperation” to Haiti and the Dominican Republic that will contribute to improving the relations between two bordering countries “condemned to be understood”.

“The Queen has accepted this trip that we have proposed to Haiti and the Dominican Republic”, said the Secretary of State during his appearance before the Committee on Ibero-American Affairs of the Senate to review his first year in office.

This visit, he continued, will contribute to “strengthening cooperation between two countries that are condemned to understand each other” and will coincide with the “great steps” being taken by the government of Dominican President Danilo Medina “regarding the acquisition of nationality and social integration” of the Haitians.

García Casas responded to Senator José María Cazalis of the PNV, who had expressed to the Secretary of State his concern for the border problems between the two countries of the island of Hispaniola, “a political issue that remains latent and that could degenerate” until become “a time bomb”.

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Doña Letizia will visit the two countries between May 20 and 24, García Casas announced before the Senate

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According to García Casas, the Spanish Cooperation has been involved in the solution of border problems between the two countries through various initiatives, such as the celebration, “a couple of months ago”, of a seminar with mayors of the two borders or the financing of a hospital in Barahona in which “Dominican doctors cater to the Haitian population, free of cost, in diseases such as AIDS and Chagas”. “Last year I visited the hospital and I hope that Her Majesty the Queen will visit him this time”, he added.

Queen Letizia joins the custom of carrying out cooperation trips, initiated by Queen Sofia in 1997. To date, Letizia has made two trips of this kind, to Honduras and El Salvador in 2015 and to Mali and Senegal in 2017. The purpose of these visits is to support the Spanish Cooperation and to verify directly the projects financed by Spain and their direct impact on the beneficiaries.