The Diplomat
The Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares, will today hold his first public event since taking office a week ago: he will take part in the Conversatory with other Ibero-American foreign ministers on the 30th anniversary of the Ibero-American Summits.
The event has been organised by the Ibero-American General Secretariat, whose head, Rebeca Grynspan, is about to leave her post after being appointed Secretary General of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD).
Grynspan herself and the foreign ministers of Costa Rica, Rodolfo Solano; Portugal, Augusto Santos Silva; Colombia, Marta Lucía Ramírez; and the Dominican Republic, Roberto Álvarez, are expected to speak alongside Albares.
Albares’ public debut, precisely at an event related to the Ibero-American Summits, an initiative in which Spain was one of the main promoters in 1991, comes after he decided to recover the Secretariat of State for Ibero-America, which his predecessor, Arancha González Laya, had incorporated into the Secretariat of State for Foreign Affairs.
The new minister wants to give greater impetus to relations with the region, with which Spain has special ties, while also emphasising the role of the Spanish language in the world, according to sources at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.