The Diplomat
The Nicaraguan government, led by Sandinista President Daniel Ortega, on Thursday removed Milagros del Carmen Urbina Rocha from her post as Minister Counsellor with consular functions at the Nicaraguan embassy in Spain.
Milagros Urbina, who has been assigned as Minister Counsellor to the Nicaraguan Embassy in Colombia, had been in the post since September 2016. She has been the embassy’s Chargé d’Affaires since March last year, when Ortega decided to remove the ambassador, Carlos Midence, from his post, citing “continuous pressure and threats of interference” from Spain.
The decision was taken to avoid expulsion, after Managua rejected the return of the Spanish ambassador, Mar Fernández-Palacios, who was in Spain after being recalled for consultations by the government of Pedro Sánchez in August 2021, in protest at a note from the Ortega regime in which “serious and unfounded accusations were made against Spain and its institutions, as well as gross falsehoods about judicial and electoral processes”, the government said.
In recent months, Spain and Nicaragua have forged a rapprochement that led to the appointment of a new Spanish ambassador in Managua, Pilar Terrén, and, more recently, a new ambassador in Madrid, the Italian nationalised Nicaraguan Maurizio Carlo Alberto Gelli.
Despite all this, the Spanish government continues to view with unease Nicaragua’s actions against the freedoms of members of the opposition and the media in that country, diplomatic sources told The Diplomat.
