The Diplomat
The Chilean ambassador to Spain, Javier Velasco, and the former vice-president of the Government and former leader of Podemos Pablo Iglesias showed yesterday their political harmony and defended the involvement of Spanish companies during the new presidential stage in the South American country.
“Chilean men and women coexist permanently with Spanish companies”, declared the ambassador during his intervention in an informative breakfast of New Economy Forum in which he was introduced by Pablo Iglesias.
According to Velasco, relations between Chile and Spain are very good “both in political and economic aspects”, including business. “A good part of our economy and our tax revenue are based on foreign investment, and the third largest investor in Chile is Spain,” behind the United States and Canada, the ambassador stressed. Spanish companies “are fundamental” for Chile, “because they bring capital (…), they modify the Chilean business environment (…) and they arrive with first world business standards and that changes the situation”, he assured.
“In public terms, the transfer that exists, the circulation of institutional ideas, the circulation of political processes between Chile and Spain is extremely powerful,” Velasco declared. For this reason, he continued, the Spanish Presidency of the European Union -which will take place in the second half of 2023- “is a tremendous possibility for the vision that is already in the new Spanish Cooperation Law to expand to the rest of Europe” and for “Europe to look at Latin America” as “an alternative to a tremendously polarized world like the one we are living in.” “Together we can be that alternative,” he added.
Likewise, the ambassador affirmed that, despite the rejection of the new Constitution in the plebiscite of last August 4, “the process continues”, since the drafting of a new Magna Carta to replace that of Augusto Pinochet was approved by “78% of the Chilean citizenry”. “What could be understood as a setback in the process, is simply the rejection of this constitutional text”, he continued. “The Chilean political forces have a duty, which is to look at these results with humility” and seek “mechanisms of dialogue that allow us to approach and strengthen this important milestone for our Republic, which has been dragging for decades an institutionality inherited from the dictatorship”.
During the presentation of the event, Pablo Iglesias assured that his “friend” Velasco belongs to “an exceptional generation of young Chileans” who “knew how to read the yearnings for transformation” of the country’s population, which materialized in the “social outburst” of 2019 and ended up leading Gabriel Boric to the Presidency.
He also assured that the new ambassador has shown that, for Chile, “the relationship with Spain is an absolute priority” and highlighted, in that sense, the “commitment of Javier Velasco to strengthen ties with Spanish companies that work in Chile or want to work in Chile”. In Iglesias’ opinion, the new Chilean government is “a reference in social and environmental justice” both for his country and its “commercial partners”, such as Spain.
