The Diplomat
Peru’s president, Dina Boluarte, has appointed the lawyer Walter Gutiérrez, who was Ombudsman between 2016 and 2021, as Peru’s new ambassador to Spain, according to a supreme resolution published yesterday in the official newspaper El Peruano.
The name of Gutiérrez, who was very critical of the previous president, Pedro Castillo, has been mentioned on several occasions in recent months in Peru, to head the Council of Ministers, but he has reportedly rejected the possibility.
The post of Peruvian ambassador to Madrid had been vacant since the resignation on 26 January of Óscar Maurtúa, who had been appointed by the government of Pedro Castillo in June 2022. Maúrtua, who was Peru’s foreign minister under Castillo between August 2021 and February 2022, expressed his disagreement with the attempted coup that the Peruvian president staged in December last year, but remained in the post until President Boluarte decided to dismiss him.
Walter Gutiérrez, who will take up his post on the date set by a new ministerial resolution, was elected by Congress as Ombudsman in 2016, when Pedro Pablo Kuczynski was president of Peru. When Castillo assumed the Presidency in July 2021, he proceeded to relieve Gutiérrez and to appoint Eliana Revollar as the new Ombudsman.
Previously, Gutiérrez, 64, was president of the Special Commission to elect the National Justice Board, as well as of the Tribunal of Honour of the Ethical Electoral Pact in the 2016 general election process, among other positions.
