The Diplomat
The Council of Ministers yesterday appointed Guzman Palacios Fernandez to the post of Spanish Ambassador to Panama. Likewise, and as The Diplomat had advanced, Gabriel Ferrán will be the new ambassador to Cyprus.
Guzmán Palacios, former chief of staff of the Secretary of State for International Cooperation of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, entered the Diplomatic Career in 2005. In his professional career he has worked as advisor in the cabinet of the minister (2005-2009), secretary of the Embassy of Spain in Caracas (2009-2013), deputy consul in the Consulate General of Spain in Mexico (2013-2016), Second Head in the Embassy of Spain in Managua (2016-2018) and vocal advisor in the cabinet of the Secretariat of State for International Cooperation and for Ibero-America and the Caribbean (2018-2019).
In 2019 he was appointed director of the Cabinet of the then Secretary of State for International Cooperation and for Ibero-America and the Caribbean (SECIPIC), the late Juan Pablo de Laiglesia, a position he held until June 2020, when the Secretary of State for Cooperation fell to Ángeles Moreno and he ceased to be in charge of Ibero-America. From that same year to date he has been director of cultural and scientific relations at the Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation (AECID).
Palacios has been decorated with the Official Cross of the Order of Civil Merit (2013), the Official Cross of the Order of Isabella the Catholic (2018), Commander of the Order of Merit for Distinguished Services of the Republic of Peru (2008) and Commander First Class Royal Order of the Polar Star Sweden (2021).
Gabriel Ferrán has been appointed Ambassador of Spain to Cyprus. Ambassador to Afghanistan between 2018 and 2021, Ferrán coordinated from the diplomatic representation the evacuation operation of the Spaniards and Afghan collaborators who were in Afghanistan in August last year, when the Taliban took power. The Armed Forces and the Security Forces took part in the operation.
A member of the Diplomatic Career since 1989, between 1990 and 1996 he served as second-in-command at the Spanish Embassies in Lebanon and Malaysia, and was subsequently assigned as Counselor for Cooperation at the Spanish Embassy in Costa Rica. In 1999 he was appointed advisor in the Cabinet of the Minister of the Interior, being assigned in 2002 as counselor at the Embassy of Spain in Morocco, and in 2006 as counselor at the Permanent Representation of Spain in Brussels to the EU.
Back in Madrid, in September 2010 he served successively as Deputy Deputy Director General for the Middle East (2010) and Maghreb (2011), and since June 2012 he has held the position of advisor in the office of the Undersecretary of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which carries with it the direction of the public body called the Obra Pía de los Santos Lugares, attached to that ministry. In September 2018 he was appointed Ambassador of Spain to Afghanistan until 2021.
