Luis Ayllón
The Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares, is preparing a new batch of ambassadorial appointments, including that of Alberto Moreno, a former Podemos candidate in Majadahonda (Madrid), to take charge of the embassy in the Czech Republic, according to The Diplomat, according to reliable sources.
Alberto Moreno Humet, 68 years old and a diplomat since 1985, was secretary general of Podemos in Majadahonda and was the candidate of the purple party for mayor of the town. This circumstance gave him notoriety, as he was the first diplomat whose membership in Podemos was known. After failing to achieve his goal in the municipal elections, in August 2018 he was posted as consul general to Marseille, where he is about to end his stay.
With the formation of the coalition government between PSOE and Unidas Podemos, some media speculated on Moreno’s name as the new ambassador in Buenos Aires, at the request of the party then led by Pablo Iglesias. However, that did not become a reality and he remained at the consulate in Marseille until now, when he will be posted to the embassy in Prague.
Alberto Moreno, born in Barcelona, was appointed, in 2007, International Advisor to the Presidency of the Generalitat of Catalonia, when it was headed by the Socialist José Montilla. He remained there until 2010, when he was appointed ambassador to Andorra.
In addition to Moreno’s appointment as ambassador to Prague, Albares has already decided on several others, including those of two high-ranking officials from the time of his predecessor in the Ministry, Arancha González-Laya, who, having been dismissed by him when he arrived at the Palace of Santa Cruz, had not received any ambassadorship.
As The Diplomat reported, these are Eva Martínez, who will go as ambassador to Costa Rica, and Fernando Fernández-Arias, who will be the new ambassador to Finland, once the authorities in those countries accept the requested approval.
Eva Martínez, a diplomat since 1991, was the director general for the Maghreb, Mediterranean and Middle East, a post she was appointed to when Alfonso Dastis was minister, in March 2017, and in which she was retained by González Laya. She was also deputy director general for the Maghreb and was stationed in Caracas, Mexico and the Permanent Representation of Spain to the EU.
Fernando Fernández-Arias, for his part, was director general of the United Nations, International Organisations and Human Rights, a post he reached after having been head of the Diplomatic School. He was already stationed in Helsinki as ‘number two’ between 2002 and 2005; he was deputy director general of the Human Rights Office at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs between 2005 and 2008; and between 2010 and 2015 he held a post at the Spanish Mission to the UN in New York. He has also been posted to the Embassy in Jordan and the Consulates in Jerusalem and London.
In addition to these appointments, The Diplomat was able to learn that José María Rodríguez-Coso, who is currently Consul General in Perpignan and has been Ambassador to Ireland and Ambassador Introducer at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, will go as Ambassador to Luxembourg.
Likewise, as ambassador to Lithuania, Albares has chosen Nieves Blanco, who is currently assigned to the Embassy in Hungary, as Counsellor for Cultural Affairs, and who was previously in Havana and in the Permanent Representation of Spain to NATO, as well as having been Director of Programming at Casa América.
Natividad Isabel Peña, currently Deputy Director General for Bilateral Relations with Sub-Saharan African Countries, will be Spain’s new Ambassador to Zimbabwe. Throughout her career, she has held several African posts, including in Luanda, Mozambique, has been posted in London and has also worked in the Directorate General for External Communication.
Several other diplomats are awaiting their ambassadorial appointments and some could be appointed at today’s Council of Ministers or at the last one before the summer holidays on 2 August.
As The Diplomat has already reported, the government has requested the corresponding approvals for the appointment of new ambassadors to Mexico (Juan Duarte), Belgium (Alberto Antón), Romania (José Antonio Hernández-Pérez-Solórzano), Ireland (Ion de la Riva), the Philippines (Miguel Utray) and Cameroon (Ignacio García Lumbreras).
Federico Torres Muro is also expected to be appointed as the new Permanent Representative to NATO, replacing Miguel Fernández-Palacios. The latter, in turn, would take over as ambassador to Rome from former foreign minister Alfonso Dastis, whose name has been bandied about as a possible new ambassador to Lisbon, although there has been no confirmation of this.
When these appointments are confirmed, Albares will have changed the head of more than seventy embassies since his arrival at the Ministry just over a year ago, although some of these appointments had already been decided by González-Laya.
Of the thirty or so embassies that were called up for renewal at the end of the year, the new heads of six (Tunisia, Latvia, Cyprus, New Zealand, Hungary and the Council of Europe) are still unknown. In addition, although they were not put out to tender, changes are expected at important embassies such as those in Washington, China and the United Nations in New York.
In other important embassies, the government has opted to keep the current heads of mission in place for longer than usual for various reasons, as this website has already reported. In Rabat, for the duration of the process of establishing a new relationship between Spain and Morocco, Ricardo Díez-Hochleitner will continue, despite the fact that he has been in the post for more than seven years.
In Algeria, where bilateral relations have become more complicated following Spain’s change of position on Western Sahara and its rapprochement with Morocco, the government decided to extend Fernando Morán’s stay, at least for another year, until at least the summer of 2023.
And in Germany, Ricardo Martínez will continue as ambassador until the end of the Spanish Presidency of the European Union, in the second half of 2023.
