The Diplomat
The former ambassador to Iran Eduardo López Busquets will be in charge of opening the new Consulate General of Spain in Chengdu, in China, which was created by the Government last August, and will become the fifth Spanish consular office in that country, after Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong and Canton.
López Busquets has been appointed to the post by the Minister of Foreign Affairs. Arancha González Laya, by resolving a competition to fill several vacancies abroad.
In the same competition, Pablo Gómez de Olea, former ambassador to Colombia and former director general of Foreign Policy for Latin America, has been appointed to head the Consulate General of Spain in Santo Domingo.
Eduardo López Busquets, who has been ambassador to Iran and Mozambique and director general of Casa Árabe, will now have to set up a Consulate that will be able to serve some 400 million people.
With the new Consulate, the Government intends to respond to the growing demand for visas in the area, avoiding the detour of travelers to other countries that process these travel authorizations more quickly. It will also enable the Consulates in Beijing and Guangzhou to respond more quickly to the demand in the rest of their demarcations.
The Executive considers that the growing activity between the People’s Republic of China and the Kingdom of Spain is giving rise to a considerable increase in the number of Spaniards visiting China or residing in its territory, and of Chinese citizens traveling to Spain -around 700,000 a year before the pandemic- or settling in our country.
Chengdu is the capital of Sichuan province, with 12 million inhabitants, and a sphere of influence that covers the whole of western China. It is the gateway to western China, with a growing implantation of Spanish companies, which has also influenced the decision to open a new Consulate, which was taken some time ago, but which so far has not been able to materialize.
The city has 42 colleges and universities and more than 600,000 students, several pillar industries (electronics, pharmaceuticals, food processing, machinery -automotive and aerospace-, petrochemicals, metallurgy and construction materials), as well as an important service sector.
