Luis Ayllón
The Spanish government has asked the Lebanese authorities for their permission to appoint diplomat Jesús Ignacio Santos Aguado as ambassador to Beirut, The Diplomat has learned from reliable sources.
Santos Aguado will replace José María Ferré, who had held the post since April 2017, almost five years ago, so the changeover was long overdue. He was one of the longest-serving ambassadors, second only to the ambassador to Morocco, Ricardo Díez-Hochleitner, who has held the post since April 2015.
Once the Lebanese government gives its approval, the Council of Ministers will approve the appointment of Jesús Santos, which will take place shortly after the Spanish Major General Aroldo Lázaro Sáez has taken command of the United Nations Mission for Lebanon (Unifil), in which our country has been participating since September 2006.
Last Monday, the Minister of Defence, Margarita Robles, together with the ambassador in Beirut, José María Ferré, attended the inauguration of General Lázaro, who, for two years, will be in charge of the 10,000 blue helmets from 46 countries that make up the multinational peacekeeping force, in which the Spanish contingent, with some 700 people, is one of the largest.
Diplomatic support for Spain’s participation in Unifil will, as in recent years, be one of the main tasks to be assumed by the new ambassador, who has family ties to Lebanon, and who was already posted as ‘Number Two’ in that country between 2004 and 2007.
Aged 66, Jesús Santos worked as a primary care doctor in Spain and Equatorial Guinea, as a member of the Spanish Red Cross, and was a researcher in Molecular Biology and Immunology, before entering the diplomatic service in 1992. His health experience led the government to appoint him, on 21 December, as Ambassador-at-Large for the International Crisis of Covid-19 and Global Health, which means that if the Lebanese government does not take too long to grant him its approval, he will have been in this post for only three to four months.
Jesús Santos has a long career as a diplomat, having served as ambassador to Guinea Conakry (2007 to 2011) and Mauritania (2017 to 2021), in addition to having served as second-in-command at the Spanish embassies in Côte d’Ivoire, Equatorial Guinea, Australia, Lebanon and Greece. He was also Deputy Director General for EU and Candidate Countries.
