Eduardo González
The Minister of Foreign Affairs, Arancha González Laya, yesterday held her first telephone conversation with the new US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, who expressed his gratitude to the Government of Pedro Sánchez for continuing to host US troops in Spanish territory.
“A pleasure to talk with Antony Blinken, together we will work to strengthen relations between Spain and the United States, multilateralism and transatlantic relations from the defense of our interests and also of shared values”, Gonzalez Laya stated on his Twitter account. “Today, Foreign Minister Arancha Gonzalez Laya and I discussed the positive and multifaceted relationship between the United States and Spain. I look forward to cooperating closely with Spain in the fight against COVID-19 and climate change”, Blinken said through the same social network.
According to sources from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs informed The Diplomat, González Laya and Blinken expressed their commitment to “join joint efforts” to fight against the pandemic and in favor of economic recovery, and agreed on the need to “redouble efforts” in the fight against climate change.
Likewise, during the meeting “the extraordinary harmony between the two countries in security and defense matters” was highlighted and Blinken “thanked Spain for its commitment to NATO”. In this sense, the US State Department specified that both ministers had talked about “ways to strengthen the bilateral and Transatlantic relationships” and that the Secretary of State “thanked Spain for hosting U.S. forces” at the Rota and Morón bases.
According to both sources, during the conversation there was also “an in-depth review” of the situation in the Sahel region, a day after the Minister’s speech at the General Assembly of the Alliance for the Sahel, and relevant issues on the international agenda were discussed, such as the Middle East, Latin America (in particular Venezuela), China and Russia.
Yesterday’s meeting was the first high-level contact between a member of the Spanish Government and the Administration of Joe Biden, who for the moment has not included the head of the Executive, Pedro Sánchez, among the twenty or so foreign leaders with whom he has spoken since he arrived at the White House almost a month ago. The “contacts” between Sánchez and Biden have been limited, to date, to the tweet written by the President of the Government on the occasion of the swearing in of the new tenant of the White House. Biden did receive, as soon as he took office on January 20, a telegram of congratulations from the King, according to ABC newspaper, although without being able to confirm if there was, subsequently, any conversation between the two.
The first direct contact between the two governments took place on February 2, when Biden’s National Security Advisor, Jake Sullivan, had a telephone conversation with Pedro Sánchez’s diplomatic advisor, Emma Aparici, to whom he also conveyed the gratitude of the United States to Spain for continuing to host US military forces in Rota and Morón, according to the White House in a press release.
