The Diplomat
The Council of Ministers yesterday appointed José María Muriel, former technical secretary general of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, to the post of Spanish ambassador to Malta, as The Diplomat had already anticipated.
Muriel will replace diplomat Consuelo Femenía, who could be posted to the Netherlands in place of María Jesús Alonso Jiménez, Spain’s future ambassador to Argentina.
Born on November 21, 1964, José María Muriel holds a degree in Law from the University of Cordoba and a diploma in Advanced European Studies from the College of Europe in Bruges. He joined the Diplomatic Career in 1990. Until July 2021, he was Technical Secretary General of the Ministry and, since then, he has been an advisory member of the Directorate General of the Foreign Service. He has been posted abroad in the Spanish diplomatic representations to the European Union, the United States and Canada. He was also Consul General of Spain in Hannover.
He also held positions in the Secretary of State for the European Communities and the Office of Human Rights. He was an advisor in the Cabinet of the President of the Government and Ambassador-at-Large for Human Rights, Democracy and the Rule of Law, as well as President of the Group of Countries in Support of the International Commission Against the Death Penalty. Within the EU institutions, he has been counsel at the Court of Justice in Luxembourg and head of the Justice, Home Affairs and Human Rights Team at the EU Delegation in the USA. He is also currently a member of the Executive Committee of the European Endowment for Democracy (EED).
