Alberto Rubio
The creation of the working group to study how Romanians living in Spain will be able to have both citizenships is “a Europeanist act that recognizes the role of the Romanian community in the economic and demographic development of Spain,” said Ambassador George Bologan during the reception he hosted to commemorate his country’s National Day.
The agreement was one of those signed during the first bilateral summit held by both governments last week in Castellón de la Plana, precisely the province where the largest number of Romanian emigrants in Spain reside. The ambassador stressed that “the summit has strengthened both the relationship between Romania and Spain and the European feeling”.
During the reception, which commemorated the national union of Transylvania with the Kingdom of Romania on December 1, 1918, Bologan said that, after the Castellon summit, Romania and Spain “have started a new and more dynamic chapter in their history”. After highlighting “the good tradition we have in terms of our economic exchanges, which we wish to increase”, he added that “important Spanish companies are carrying out high-profile works in energy and infrastructures”.
He also alluded to the bilateral collaboration in Defense, which the war in Ukraine has further highlighted. After highlighting the recent arrival of eight fighters and a Spanish military contingent in Romania, he said that his country “plays an active and pragmatic role in NATO and the EU” and proposed “to reflect on the situation of the war in Ukraine, the security in the Black Sea area and the eastern flank, that is to say our security, but also on the security of the southern flank, which is also our security”.
Finally, he assured that it is “essential to always talk about our Fatherland Europe“, which he described as a “sign of hope”, in the face of Euroskeptics, whom he asked: what do they want to replace the EU with? “In this difficult period we are going through,” he concluded, “we must remember that the future is based on our unity, both on a human, economic, political and geographical level.”
Bologan therefore described the multiple threats facing the West, both in the East – the Russian threat and the humanitarian crisis that has left 3 million Ukrainian refugees in Romania – and in the South – political instability and mass migration – as well as cyber attacks and street protests in Iran and China. “These are just some of the reasons that help us understand the essential role of collaboration, as well as that of NATO and the EU in defending our democratic values.”
