The Diplomat
Panama’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Janina Tewaney, made her first official visit to Spain yesterday, where she was received by the Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares, and in which she expressed her wish that the Spanish Presidency will contribute to the rapprochement between Latin America and the EU and that Spain will play a role of “organic and valid interlocutor” between the two regions.
“I receive in Madrid my counterpart from Panama Janina Tewaney Mencomo to continue deepening our bilateral relations and cooperation,” Albares said through his official Twitter account after the breakfast meeting offered by the minister at the ministerial headquarters of the Palacio de Viana. “We also addressed the challenges and opportunities in the region, EU relations with Latin America and the Caribbean and the upcoming Ibero-American Summit,” he added.
“Panama and Spain are partners, friends and historic allies,” the Panamanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs stated in a press release. “Today we strengthened these ties with my counterpart, in a frank meeting where we talked about the challenges and opportunities of this relationship of friendship and cooperation,” the foreign minister stated.
This is Tewaney’s first official visit to Spain since taking office on October 10. Albares had already held a bilateral meeting with her at the end of October in Buenos Aires on the occasion of the EU and CELAC ministerial summit. Apart from that, Janina Tewaney is the third foreign minister of her country to officially visit Spain in the last four years, after Isabel De Saint Malo in April 2019 and Erika Mouynes in June 2021. Albares himself met with Mouynes in January 2022, taking advantage of his trip to Tegucigalpa to accompany the King at the inauguration of Honduran President Xiomara Castro.
After her meeting with Albares, Janaina Tewaney participated in a forum organized by the EFE news agency at Casa de América in which she expressed her wish that during the Spanish Presidency of the Council of the EU there would be a “rapprochement” between Latin America and the European Union and that Spain would play an “organic and valid interlocutor” role between the two regions.
“We have high hopes in the Ibero-American meetings, and with the summit of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) and the European Union, that there will be a real relaunching of relations,” she said. “The EU’s relationship with Latin America is very symbiotic and over the years has been historic and special,” she continued. “We understand that Spain is a valid interlocutor for rapprochement,” she added.
On the other hand, the minister thanked the Spanish authorities for their decision to remove Panama from their list of countries that do not collaborate in the fight against tax fraud, a measure that “helps us a lot as a country” and that represents a “recognition of the effort that Panama makes at a financial and economic level to achieve these transparency objectives that are part of our global standards”, and warned that the next objective of her government is to achieve, this year, the removal of Panama from the list of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF).
Likewise, Janaina Tewaney downplayed the importance of the Nicaraguan Government’s decision to dismiss its ambassador in Panama, Marvin Roberto Ortega Rodríguez. “The relationship with Nicaragua, as well as with all countries in the region, is very fluid, good and open,” she assured.
“While it is true that a few weeks ago Panama gave a communiqué in which it showed some concern with stateless persons and offered its good offices to collaborate in a peaceful and open dialogue, the communication does not maintain any relation with our concern,” she stated, in relation to the concern shown by her country over Nicaragua’s decision to withdraw the nationality of 300 opponents expelled from Nicaraguan territory. “We are confident that one thing is not related to the other, an internal movement was made and while the person arrives, the person in charge of business will be there, something that happens in many countries when internal movements are made among diplomats”, explained Tewaney, who specified that Panama will keep its ambassador in Nicaragua.
