Luis Ayllón
The Council of Ministers yesterday appointed Enrique Erik Yturriaga Saldanha as the new Director General for Latin America and the Caribbean, replacing Xavier Martí, who has been appointed Director General for Spaniards Abroad and Consular Affairs.
Xavier Martí will fill the vacancy left by Juan Duarte, who, after four years in the post, has been appointed new ambassador to Mexico, as The Diplomat reported.
Enrique Yturriaga entered the diplomatic career in 1993 and has extensive experience in Ibero-American affairs, as since August 2013 he was Deputy Director General for Mercosur Countries and Ibero-American Multilateral Organisations, in addition to having been posted as a counsellor at the Embassy in Buenos Aires between 2008 and 2013.
He has also held various positions related to multilateral diplomacy, both at the Permanent Mission to the UN in Geneva and as Deputy Director General of Technical International Organisations. In addition, he was an advisor in the Unit for the Coordination of Spain’s Participation in the Security Council in 2003-2004 and has held second posts at the Embassies in Romania and Norway.
Xavier Martí, for his part, leaves the post of Director General for Latin America and the Caribbean, which he took up just over a year ago, to head the Directorate General for Spaniards Abroad and Consular Affairs.
A diplomat since 2006, between June 2020 and July 2021 he was director of the Cabinet of the Secretary of State for International Cooperation; and between September 2018 and June 2020 he headed the Technical Cabinet of the Under-Secretariat for Foreign Affairs, European Union and Cooperation, when both senior positions were held by Ángeles Moreno, the current Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs.
Previously, Xavier Martí held various posts related to consular matters. Between 2010 and 2014, he was deputy consul in Lima and between 2014 and 2017, in Sao Paulo. He was also Deputy Assistant Director-General for Alien Affairs and Spanish delegate to the Visa Group of the Council of the European Union between 2008 and 2010, and previously served in the Consular Emergency Division.
From August 2017 to September 2018, he was posted to Kenya, where he served as second-in-command and deputy permanent representative to UN-Habitat.
Finally, the Council of Ministers carried out as expected the appointment as ambassador to Mexico of Juan Duarte, who was in charge of Consular Affairs for the last four years. As The Diplomat has already reported, the Mexican authorities granted Duarte’s approval in less than two months, considerably less time than it took the Spanish government to grant it to the ambassador chosen by President Andrés Manuel López Obrador for Madrid, Quirino Ordaz.
Juan Duarte entered the diplomatic career in 1994 and since then has held, among others, the posts of Deputy Consul in Paris, Deputy Director General of the Human Rights Office, Counsellor for Cultural Affairs at the Spanish Embassy in Buenos Aires and Counsellor at the Embassy in London, responsible for monitoring the Brexit process.
