The Diplomat
Foreign Minister José Manuel Albares made his first official visit to New Delhi yesterday, where he addressed the strengthening of defense and trade cooperation between Spain and India and signed a joint declaration for cultural and academic cooperation.
“Excellent meeting with my counterpart, Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, on my first official trip to India, a global power and important partner and ally,” Albares stated through his Twitter account. “We worked to deepen our bilateral relations and have signed a Declaration for Cultural and Academic Cooperation,” he added. “We discussed our growing engagements in the political, defense, economic and cultural fields and envisage further collaboration to support self-sufficiency and resilient supply chains,” the Indian minister indicated, for his part, through the same social network.
As reported by the Indian Ministry of External Affairs, the two ministers insisted on the need to hold regular meetings through bilateral institutional mechanisms and pledged to enhance cooperation in areas such as trade and investment, people-to-people relations, climate cooperation, green energy, science and technology, innovation and defense and security.
Likewise, José Manuel Albares and Subrahmanyam Jaishankar signed the Joint Declaration of Intent for Cooperation in the Cultural and Academic Spheres, whose objective is “to establish a general framework for cultural and academic cooperation activities, to be promoted and organized by both signatories”, according to the document, to which Efe news agency has had access. Under the agreement, the two countries undertake to encourage the mutual participation of Indian and Spanish-speaking artists, to organize gastronomic events or literary fairs, to promote the co-production of dance, music and theater events, to cooperate in cinema and other visual arts and to organize joint cultural tours in Spain and Spanish-speaking countries.
Albares and his Indian counterpart also pledged to deepen cooperation in defense and security, with Airbus Spain supplying 56 C295 aircraft (military transport aircraft designed by the Spanish company CASA at the end of the 1990s), 40 of which will be manufactured in India. The two ministers also reaffirmed their resolve to work closely together in the fight against common threats such as terrorism, violent extremism and cybercrime.
The heads of Spanish and Indian diplomacy welcomed the recovery of bilateral trade, which now exceeds even pre-COVID-19 levels, and assured that there is great room for growth in this area. They also agreed that there are new opportunities in sectors such as information technology, pharmaceuticals and renewable energy, as well as in new and unexplored emerging areas such as green hydrogen, electric mobility, advanced materials and deep sea exploration, where the two countries can continue to collaborate more closely.
Spain is one of India’s main trading partners within the European Union. According to Efe, Albares highlighted before his Indian interlocutors the “added value” that Spanish companies can contribute in sectors of special interest for the current projects of the Indian Government, such as railroads (with special attention to high speed), infrastructures, airports, water and renewable energy. They also discussed Navantia‘s interest in obtaining a contract for the construction of six submarines in India, a project worth around 6,000 million euros, and the possible use of the EU’s Next Generation funds for Indian companies wishing to invest in Spain.
The ministers also discussed a number of regional and global issues of mutual interest, such as climate change (a challenge that cannot be met “without a country like India, with a population of 1.3 billion,” according to Albares), global health, sustainable development and the fight against terrorism, and welcomed the resumption of Free Trade Agreement negotiations between India and the EU, which will take place later this month.
José Manuel Albares also held a meeting yesterday in New Delhi with investors and representatives of Spanish companies in India. “I have offered our support for trade and investment with India, an important market in which our companies are increasingly relevant players,” the minister stated via Twitter.
Albares also took advantage of his trip to New Delhi (the first by a Spanish Foreign Minister since 2019, when then Minister Josep Borrell traveled to the country as a preview of a possible visit by Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, which has not yet been finalized) to meet with Spanish Embassy workers, whom he thanked for “their essential work building the Spain-India relationship and providing consular care to our citizens in that country.”
