The Diplomat
The Chilean Andrés Allamand took up his post as Ibero-American Secretary General yesterday in Madrid, to which he was appointed on 26 November.
Allamand, whose appointment was agreed by the 22 countries that make up the Ibero-American Conference, replaces the Costa Rican Rebeca Grynspan, who was appointed Secretary General of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) in September last year.
After the Uruguayan Enrique V. Iglesias and Rebeca Grynspan, the Chilean politician is the third person to head the Ibero-American General Secretariat (SEGIB) since it began in 2005. His mandate will be for four years and may be renewed once.
Allamand was Chile’s foreign minister in the government of Sebastián Piñera until last Sunday, when he resigned from his post, after controversy was sparked in his country by the fact that days earlier, acting in his capacity as Ibero-American secretary general, he had met in Madrid with the Spanish foreign minister, José Manuel Albares, whose department described the meeting as a “working meeting”.
The resignation of Allamand as Chilean foreign minister, who in any case would have stepped down as of 11 March, when Gabriel Boric will take over the Chilean presidency, hastened the moment for him to officially occupy the Ibero-American General Secretariat.
Andrés Allamand is a 66-year-old lawyer with a long political career in Chile, where he has been a deputy and senator, as well as Minister of Defence and, from July 2020, head of the Foreign Affairs portfolio. The Segib is his first post in an international organisation.
When he was appointed to the post in November, Allamand said that he has “an intense agenda” ahead of him and that Ibero-America “needs greater political cohesion” to overcome the covid-19 pandemic.
