The Diplomat
The Council of Ministers yesterday appointed Diego Martínez Belío as the new Director of the Cabinet of the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Manuel Albares, a position in which he will replace Camilo Villarino.
José Manuel Albares is thus making his first appointment since he took over the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Monday.
Ministers’ cabinet directors leave office when their ministers do, but they are sometimes reappointed. This is what happened with Villarino, who began in 2017 to occupy the post when the head of the ministry was Alfonso Dastis, with a PP government, and was subsequently maintained with the ministers appointed by Pedro Sánchez: Josep Borrell, Margarita Robles (in a brief interim period) and Arancha González Laya.
Villarino’s non-continuation was considered a certainty, on the one hand, because the government has already requested Russia’s approval to appoint him as ambassador to Moscow, and, on the other, because he is directly involved in the case of the reception in Spain of Polisario Front leader Brahim Ghali, which sparked the crisis with Morocco.
Villarino could face problems with his appointment as ambassador to Russia, if the head of the 7th Court of Instruction in Zaragoza, Rafael Lasala, accepts a lawyer’s request to charge the diplomat, as director of the Minister’s Office, with prevarication and concealment, on the grounds that the Ministry of Defence was instructed to allow Ghali to enter Spain on 18 April without requesting his documents.
Villarino’s departure, together with that of the minister, Arancha González Laya, clears the way for Albares to begin a rapprochement with Morocco, which could take the form of a trip to that country, with the aim of trying to rebuild bilateral relations.
In any case, Albares has opted to make a change in the head of his Cabinet and has chosen Diego Martínez Belío, who currently holds the same post in the Secretary of State for the European Union, headed by Juan González-Barba.
Martínez Belío already worked for Albares when he was Pedro Sánchez’s main foreign policy advisor from his position as secretary general for International Affairs, European Union, G20 and Global Security in the Presidency of the Government. Albares’ new chief of staff was a technical advisor and member of the advisory board of the Directorate of European Affairs and G20.
Born in Huesca in 1977, Martínez Belío holds a degree in Law and has been a member of the Diplomatic Corps since 2007. He has also been a technical adviser in the Cabinet of the Minister of Foreign Affairs and head of service in the Directorate General of Foreign Policy for Latin America and in the Sub-Directorate General for the Middle East.
Abroad, he was posted to the Spanish Embassy in Equatorial Guinea, where he was Chargé d’Affaires for some time. He has also been Deputy Consul of Spain in Casablanca (Morocco).
