The Diplomat
Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Minister, Prince Faisal bin Farhan al Saud, paid a working visit to Spain yesterday to discuss, among other issues, trade and investment opportunities between the two countries.
“Good meeting with my counterpart from Saudi Arabia, Faisal bin Farhan al Saud,” said Foreign Minister José Manuel Albares, via his Twitter account, after meeting with the head of Saudi diplomacy at the Palacio de Viana, in Madrid. “We addressed bilateral relations, trade and investment opportunities and global issues,” he added.
“The two sides reviewed the friendly and cooperative relations between the two countries and discussed strengthening bilateral cooperation in various fields and ways to support and develop them,” the Saudi Foreign Ministry said, for its part, via the same social network. The two ministers also discussed “ways to intensify joint coordination in the interests of the two countries” and “regional and international developments,” it added.
The meeting came a week after the Saudi-Spanish Investment Forum was held in Riyadh, where the Minister of Industry, Trade and Tourism, Reyes Maroto, stressed that Spain “is the world leader in the tourism infrastructure sector” and wants “to be Saudi Arabia’s strategic partner in tourism to help achieve the goals set out in the Vision 2030 program.”
The Saudi minister was also received at La Zarzuela Palace by King Philip VI. The meeting was attended by the Secretary of State for Foreign and Global Affairs, Ángeles Moreno Bau; the Spanish Ambassador to Saudi Arabia, Jorge Hevia Sierra; the Saudi Arabian Ambassador to Spain, Azzam Abdulkarim Algain; and the Director of the Cabinet of the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Abdulrahman Arkan Aldawood.
Faisal bin Farhan al Saud, a member of the Saud dynasty, has been foreign minister since October 2019. Yesterday’s was the first visit by a member of the Saudi Royal House since 2018, when Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman visited Madrid accompanied by a ministerial entourage that sealed several agreements between the two countries. That was also the last visit to Spain by a foreign minister, who at the time was Adel Al Jubeir.
The Saudi minister also participated yesterday in a debate on the “new horizons for Saudi Arabia’s foreign policy”, organized by the Elcano Royal Institute, in the course of which he explained the Vision 2030 investment program launched by the Government and the Saudi initiative to end the crisis in Yemen, which includes a comprehensive ceasefire under UN control and the support of the international community in the fight against the militias supported by Iran, “which represent a real threat to the peoples of the region and the world”. Regarding Ukraine, Al Saud offered his country’s support for de-escalation, the search for negotiated political solutions between the parties to the conflict and all international efforts to resolve the crisis politically. The head of Saudi diplomacy himself received Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in Riyadh on May 31.
