The Diplomat
King Philip VI and the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, received yesterday in Madrid the Secretary General of the United Nations, António Guterres, on the occasion of the second day of his official visit to Spain.
Guterres has been in Spain since Thursday, when he visited the United Nations Information and Communications Technology Center (UNICTF-V) in Valencia, accompanied by the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Arancha González Laya, and the President of the Valencian Community, Ximo Puig. The visit is part of the reform project led by the Portuguese leader to improve the efficiency of the United Nations system. António Guterres, the ninth secretary-general of the United Nations, took office on January 1, 2017 and was recently re-elected for a second five-year term.
The second day of the UN Secretary General’s visit began with his participation in a high-level panel on Climate Action for a Green Recovery, together with the Fourth Vice-President and Minister for Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge, Teresa Ribera, and continued at the Moncloa Palace, where he was received by the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez.
At the end of the meeting, Sánchez and Guterres held a joint press conference in which the head of the Executive highlighted Spain’s commitment to multilateralism and warned of the migratory challenge facing Spain, accentuated by “the diplomatic crisis with Morocco”. Likewise, Pedro Sánchez called for a “more humanist” vision when addressing the migratory challenge and recalled that the United Nations Global Compact for Migration, adopted in 2018, defends a “safe, orderly and regular” migration, in the words of the UN Secretary General himself.
For his part, António Guterres expressed his “solidarity and admiration” towards Spain for what it suffered during the pandemic, a crisis that, he assured, has allowed him “to witness Spain’s exemplary cooperation with the United Nations system”. He also highlighted the commitment of the Spanish Executive with the COVAX mechanism and with climate change and urged Spain to be “a bridge of the North with credibility in the South” in the defense of the Paris Agreement.
When asked by journalists about the recent pardons for the leaders of the Catalan independence process, António Guterres warned that “it is not proper for a UN secretary general to comment on the internal politics of member states” but “there is an essential global principle: all problems must be solved politically and dialogue is an essential instrument for solving the problems of our time”. For this reason, he added, “the creation of conditions for dialogue to bear fruit is very important in our societies”.
After the meeting with Sánchez, the UN Secretary General was received by King Philip VI, with whom he held a working meeting that was also attended by Arancha González Laya; the Ambassador Permanent Representative of Spain to the United Nations, Agustín Santos; and the Director General of the United Nations, International Organizations and Human Rights, Fernando Fernández-Arias. Later, the King and Queen of Spain hosted a lunch in his honor at the Royal Palace in Madrid, which was also attended by Pedro Sánchez, Arancha González Laya, the Vice President and Minister of the Presidency, Relations with Parliament and Democratic Memory, Carmen Calvo, and the Minister of Social Rights and Agenda 2030, Ione Belarra.
