The Diplomat
The Council of Ministers yesterday appointed diplomat Santiago Jiménez Martín as the new ambassador to Uruguay, replacing José Javier Gómez-Llera, as reported by The Diplomat. Jiménez was deputy head of the Cabinet of Pablo Iglesias when he was vice-president of the Government; and director of the Cabinet of the Minister of Social Rights and Agenda 2020, Ione Belarra.
Santiago Jiménez entered the diplomatic career in 2005 and held various diplomatic posts until the formation of the coalition government between the PSOE and Unidas Podemos in January 2020. Then, the newly appointed second vice-president of the Government and Minister of Social Rights and Agenda 2030, Pablo Iglesias, called him to be deputy director of a Cabinet headed by the former Chief of Defence Staff Julio Rodríguez.
In March 2021, after Iglesias left the Vice-Presidency of the Executive, Santiago Jiménez became the director of the Cabinet of the new Minister of Social Rights and Agenda 2030, Ione Belarra, until last May, when he resigned to return to the diplomatic career. Jiménez went on to work at the Spanish Agency for International Cooperation and Development (AECID), although he was also recently part of an OSCE election observation mission in Bosnia.
Santiago Jiménez’s greatest diplomatic experience is in the Middle East, as he has been posted to the Embassies in Egypt and the United Arab Emirates -where he was ‘number two’-, in addition to having been Chargé d’Affaires ad interim at the Spanish Embassy in Damascus between 2012 and 2015, during the toughest years of the war in Syria, and residing part of that time, for security reasons, in Beirut.
In addition to having worked between 2008 and 2012 in Moncloa, during the presidency of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, Santiago Jiménez has held posts related to the media. He was assigned to the Diplomatic Information Office on several occasions, most recently in 2019, as deputy director general. His experience led him to write the book “Diplomacy and Journalism: Cooperation or Competition?”, in which he analyses the influence of the media in foreign policy.
After the appointment of Alberto Moreno -former Podemos candidate for the Majadahona mayoralty- as ambassador to the Czech Republic, Jiménez becomes the second diplomat linked to the purple party to be placed at the head of an embassy by the government of Pedro Sánchez.
Santiago Jiménez has been a personal friend of Pablo Iglesias since his youth, and in his cabinet he was one of his main advisors on international affairs, accompanying him on some of his trips, such as the one he made to La Paz to attend the inauguration of Luis Arce as president of Bolivia.
In addition, the Council of Ministers yesterday appointed Ángel Lossada Torres-Quevedo as Ambassador-at-Large for the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.
Lossada was Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs and Director General for International Terrorism, Non-Proliferation and Disarmament Affairs, and has also served as ambassador to Cyprus and the Czech Republic, as well as ambassador to the Republic of Cyprus and the Czech Republic.
