The Diplomat
The diplomat Jaime Alejandro Moreno Bau has been appointed, at the proposal of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, as the new Director General of the Centro Sefarad-Israel, at the meeting held on Monday by the institution’s Governing Council.
Moreno Bau will replace Miguel de Lucas, also a diplomat, who had been working at the Centro for 14 years, almost eight of them as director general, developing an intense activity in everything related to Israel and the Jewish world in Spain. The Governing Council thanked him yesterday for his work during this time.
The new director of the Centro Sefarad-Israel entered the Diplomatic Career in 2006 and, since July 2019, he has been Deputy Director General for Consular Protection and Assistance at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, after having spent the previous three years at the Spanish Embassy in Tel Aviv in charge of Consular, Cultural and Administrative Affairs.
Aged 44 and a graduate in Spanish-French Law from the Complutense University of Madrid and the Sorbonne University of Paris, Jaime Moreno Bau has also been posted to the Spanish Embassies in South Africa, Chile and Mozambique. In addition, in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, he has held various posts in the Directorate General of Foreign Policy for North America and has been Deputy Assistant Director General for Sub-Saharan Africa.
The new head of the Centro Sefarad-Israel is the brother of the current State Secretary for Foreign and Global Affairs, Ángeles Moreno Bau.
The Governing Council, which, together with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Community of Madrid and the City Council of the capital, highlighted the responsibilities he has held in Spain and, above all, his posting at the Spanish Embassy in Israel between 2016 and 2019, when appointing Jaime Moreno Bau as the new director general.
The newly appointed, thanked the trust placed in him and stressed that as Consul in Tel Aviv he was responsible for implementing the law 12/2015 on granting Spanish nationality to the Sephardic originating in Spain, “which allowed me – he said – to address the descendants of those Spaniards who were unjustly expelled by Spain in 1492, praising their bravery and courage for having been able to preserve the Spanish language, culture and customs”.
He also pointed out that as cultural counsellor of the Spanish Embassy in Israel he had been able to maintain “close contact with the teams of such prestigious institutions as Yad Vashem, the Israel Museum – where he took the exhibition ‘Zurbarán, Jacob and his twelve sons, paintings from Auckland Castle’ – the Hebrew University and the University of Tel Aviv”. He added that “it will be an honour to put this experience at the service of Centro Sefarad-Israel”.
Centro Sefarad-Israel is a public diplomacy institution created in 2006 with the aim of furthering the study of the legacy of Jewish culture and promoting greater knowledge of it within Spanish society, through the organisation of different cultural and informative activities. It also promotes the development of ties of friendship and cooperation between Spanish society and the Jewish world.
