The Diplomat
The Cuban government has appointed Marcelino Medina González, until now first deputy foreign minister, as its new ambassador to Spain. He is expected to take up the post at the beginning of the year.
Medina was officially appointed last Friday to take charge of the Cuban Embassy in Madrid, which was headed by Eumelio Caballero, who had been sent to take charge of the diplomatic representation after the return of Ambassador Gustavo Machín to Havana last summer.
The appointment of Medina, the next in the hierarchy of Cuban diplomacy after Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez, had been agreed some time ago, but has come about in parallel with the arrival in Spain of playwright Yunior García, one of the main promoters of the Archipiélago Group, the driving force behind the frustrated ‘Civic March’ in Cuba on the 15th, and when the return of accreditations to Efe journalists accredited in the Caribbean country has still not been fully resolved. García was received at the Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs by the Minister, José Manuel Albares, and the Secretary of State for Latin America and the Caribbean, Juan Fernández-Trigo, Spain’s former ambassador to Havana.
Before becoming first deputy foreign minister in 2009, Marcelino Medina held various positions in the Ministry, where he specialised in European affairs. He was also stationed in Germany, first in Bonn before the fall of the Wall and then, after the country’s reunification, in Berlin as ambassador from 2001 to 2005.
Medina has been to Spain on several occasions and his last official visit took place in October 2018. The Spanish government did not make public this visit, during which he met with the then Minister of Foreign Affairs, Josep Borrell, until several days later. Predictably, one of the objectives of that trip was to prepare for the visit that the president of the government, Pedro Sánchez, was to make to Havana a month later.
