The Diplomat
King Philip VI travels today to San José, Costa Rica, to attend the ceremonies for the transfer of the Presidential Command to the President-elect of Costa Rica, Rodrigo Alberto Chaves Robles.
Apart from attending the inauguration ceremony, which will take place tomorrow, Sunday, May 8, the King will hold meetings with the outgoing president, Carlos Alvarado, and the incoming president of Costa Rica, Rodrigo Chaves, as well as with the Spanish community. Philip VI will travel accompanied by the Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares.
“The attendance of His Majesty the King and the Minister of Foreign Affairs, European Union and Cooperation to the inauguration of President Chaves reaffirms Spain’s will to continue strengthening the strong ties of friendship that unite us, based on indissoluble shared values, for the benefit of our citizens,” the Government stated in a press release.
The King represents Spain in the inaugurations of Ibero-American presidents, a task that Mr Philip has been assuming since 1996 when he was still Prince of Asturias. This is the ninth participation of Philip VI in an Inauguration of an Ibero-American president since he has been King, since he was in 2018 in that of the Mexican Andrés Manuel López Obrador; in 2019 in that of the Panamanian Laurentino Cortizo; in 2020 in those of Uruguay’s Luis Lacalle Pou and Bolivia’s Luis Arce; in 2021 in those of Ecuador’s Guillermo Lasso Mendoza and Peru’s Pedro Castillo; and in 2022 in those of Honduras’ Xiomara Castro and Chile’s Gabriel Boric. Therefore, this will be the third inauguration of an Ibero-American president to be attended by the Monarch in 2022.
Rodrigo Chaves overcame last April 3 the former president José María Figueres Olsen, of the National Liberation Party, in the second round of the presidential elections in Costa Rica, in elections marked by an abstention of more than 40 percent. Chaves, of the Social Democratic Progress Party, is a 60-year-old economist who worked for more than thirty years at the World Bank and was Minister of Finance during the government of Carlos Alvarado, between 2019 and 2020.
