The Diplomat
The Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares, received last Thursday in Madrid his Paraguayan counterpart, Euclides Acevedo, who thanked Spain for its support to his country in the fight against the pandemic and with whom he discussed the upcoming cooperation trip that Queen Letizia will make to Paraguay.
During the meeting, according to the two Ministries, Acevedo thanked Spain for its collaboration with Paraguay in the fight against the pandemic through the donation of vaccines and medicines, and highlighted the position taken by the Spanish Government regarding universal access to vaccines against COVID-19.
Likewise, both ministers agreed on the importance of Queen Letizia’s cooperation trip “to give visibility and renewed impetus to the longstanding, valuable and very intense Spanish-Paraguayan cooperation”, which is currently focused on the areas of health, gender -including the fight against human trafficking-, water and sanitation, education, and culture for development. Spain is the European Union’s largest cooperating partner in Paraguay and Paraguay is listed as a “priority partnership country” in the current Spanish Cooperation Master Plan. The current Country Partnership Framework (CPF) for the period 2020-2023 focuses, above all, on supporting the transition to sustainable production models, the creation of quality social services, the promotion of diversity and inclusion, and institution building.
In addition, the two ministers signed a Memorandum of Understanding for academic cooperation between the Carlos Antonio López Diplomatic and Consular Academy of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Paraguay and the Diplomatic School of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Spain. On the other hand, Euclides Acevedo chaired yesterday, at the headquarters of the Embassy of Paraguay in Madrid, a conference of Paraguayan ambassadors accredited in Europe, in which they discussed the expectations and challenges of the relationship with Europe. The day before, the minister and the ambassador, Ricardo Scavone Yegros, presided over a meeting with the Paraguayan consuls general accredited in Spain.
The Queen will travel to Paraguay between November 2 and 4, accompanied by the Secretary of State for International Cooperation, Pilar Cancela, to see first hand the activities carried out by the Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation (AECID) and the NGOs supported by Spanish Cooperation in the areas of health, education, culture and women. As explained by Euclides Acevedo on October 4, the Queen’s program will include a visit to the former Jesuit missions in the south of the country, where the Spanish Government is developing several projects, and several meetings with the First Lady, Silvana Lopez. On the same day, the Foreign Minister announced that the President of Paraguay, Mario Abdo Benítez, will visit Spain in early 2022.
The Queen made her debut with cooperation trips -which she inherited from Queen Sofia- in 2015, when she visited Honduras and El Salvador. In 2017 she traveled to Senegal, in 2018 she was in the Dominican Republic and Haiti, in 2019 she moved to Mozambique and at the end of 2020 she repeated her humanitarian visit to Honduras.
