The Diplomat
The Council of Ministers yesterday appointed Victorio Redondo as Spain’s ambassador to France and Alfredo Martínez Serrano as Spain’s ambassador to Canada, as The Diplomat had advanced.
Martínez Serrano held his position in Zarzuela since November 2014, a few months after the proclamation as King of Spain of Philip VI, of whom he is a person of absolute confidence. He had already worked in Zarzuela Protocol between 2007 and 2012, when he was assigned as “number two” to the Embassy in Cairo. Therefore, his departure will force the King to look for a new head of Protocol, a position that, traditionally, has been occupied by a diplomat.
Born in Oviedo in 1971 and a member of the Diplomatic Career since 1998, the new ambassador has been head of service in the Cabinet of the Minister of Foreign Affairs and has served as second-in-command of the Spanish Embassies in Saudi Arabia, Bulgaria, El Salvador and Egypt.
On the other hand, the Government yesterday appointed Victorio Redondo Baldrich as Spanish Ambassador to France, who will fill the vacancy left last July by José Manuel Albares after his appointment as Minister of Foreign Affairs. Redondo had been ambassador to Switzerland since the end of September 2020 and, between 2018 and the beginning of 2020, he was director general of Foreign Affairs and Global Security in the Cabinet of the President of the Government, under the orders of Albares himself, who was then in charge of the General Secretariat for International Affairs, European Union, G20 and Global Security.
From 2013 to 2018 he was deputy permanent representative ambassador to the Office of the United Nations and International Organizations in Geneva. Previously, from 2004 to 2011 he was advisor for European and EU affairs to the then Prime Minister, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero. A diplomat since 1991, he participated in the negotiations on the conflict in the former Yugoslavia and for the formation of the European administration in Mostar, and later was counselor for Political Affairs at the Spanish Embassy in Russia. From 2000 to 2004, he was counselor at the Permanent Representation of Spain to the EU in Brussels and representative in the enlargement negotiations with ten new member states.
Pascual Navarro and Federico Torres Muro
The Council of Ministers also appointed yesterday the diplomat Pascual Navarro Ríos to the head of the General Secretariat of the European Union, a body recovered by the Government with a view to the Spanish Presidency of the EU, which Spain will assume in the second half of 2023, as The Diplomat had also advanced. Navarro has extensive experience in EU affairs and was since 2017 director general for the Coordination of the Internal Market and other Community Policies, after having held the post of chief of staff of the Secretary of State for the European Union, between 2008 and 2011, when he was appointed ambassador to the Czech Republic.
The General Secretariat for the EU, which was recovered last week by the Council of Ministers, already existed at other times in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on the eve of assuming the rotating Presidency and was occupied by prominent diplomats, such as Alfonso Dastis, who later became the head of the ministerial department; Carlos Bastarreche, former ambassador to the EU and in London; and Miguel Ángel Navarro, former ambassador to Japan and former deputy permanent representative to the EU. The General Secretariat will reinforce and report to the Secretary of State for the European Union, headed by Juan González Barba.
On the other hand, and as The Diplomat had also advanced, Federico Torres Muro will replace Fidel Sendagorta as Director General of Foreign and Security Policy of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which will allow him to lead the Directorate General with the greatest weight within the Ministry and on which political relations within the European Union depend.
Torres Muro was appointed in February 2020 as Director General of Strategy, Prospective and Coherence, until a week ago his position was abolished, after the disappearance of the Secretary of State for Global Spain. In that position he was the main responsible for elaborating, together with the then Secretary of State, Manuel Muñiz, the Foreign Action Strategy 2021-2024. The new Director General of Foreign Policy has extensive experience as a diplomat, having served as Spain’s ambassador to Ecuador and El Salvador, as well as “number two” at Spain’s Permanent Representation to the Council of Europe in Strasbourg. Torres Muro was also posted to the Embassies in Libya, Argentina, the United Kingdom and Morocco, and was director of the Cabinet of the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs and of the Cabinet of the Secretary General of the Presidency of the Government.
Likewise, the Council of Ministers yesterday appointed Alicia Rico as director general for Africa, who was Spain’s ambassador to the Republic of Ghana between 2017 and 2021 and who replaces Raimundo Robredo, who is emerging as the new ambassador to South Africa; and María Dolores Lledó, former director of the Cabinet of the Secretary of State for International Cooperation, as director general for the Coordination of the Internal Market and other Community Policies, a news that had also been advanced by The Diplomat.
