Luis Ayllón
Yolanda Díaz announced yesterday the signing of the diplomat Agustín Santos Maraver, current ambassador of Spain’s permanent representative to the United Nations in New York, as ‘number two’ in her candidacy for the Congress of Deputies in the elections of 23 July.
The leader of the coalition of left-wing parties ‘Sumar’ surprised yesterday with the decision, which she announced on her Twitter account, pointing out that it was “good news”, and adding: “The defence of multilateralism, human rights and the global fight against climate change are key to Sumar”.
Agustín Santos has been at the head of the Spanish Mission to the UN since August 2018, when he was appointed to the post by the then Minister of Foreign Affairs, Josep Borrell, after the government of Pedro Sánchez dismissed Jorge Moragas, Mariano Rajoy’s former chief of staff at Moncloa.
Yolanda Díaz has surprised with the choice of Agustín Santos to accompany her in the candidacy, despite the fact that the diplomat is known among his career colleagues for having always held left-wing positions, to the point that he was a member of the board of Izquierda Unida.
The presence of another diplomat, Ernesto Urtasun, in Díaz’s team may have influenced her decision, although the Vice-President knows Agustín Santos personally, at least from the contacts she has had with him when he has travelled to New York.
Born in Los Angeles (United States) in 1955, Santos Maraver graduated in Philosophy and Arts and Political Science and Sociology from the Complutense University of Madrid and entered the diplomatic service in 1982.
His first diplomatic postings as a diplomat took him to communist China and Fidel Castro’s Cuba. The third of his posts was in the United States, where his ideas, according to some of his colleagues, began to become more moderate. Subsequently, he was posted to the Spanish Agency for International Cooperation and to the International Department of the Presidency of the Government, as an adviser, under Felipe González.
After working at the Embassy in Australia and the Permanent Representation to the EU in Brussels, Agustín Santos joined the Cabinet of the then Minister of Foreign Affairs, Miguel Ángel Moratinos, in 2004, where he was in charge of parliamentary affairs. At the same time, Santos, through Moratinos, liaised between José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero’s POSE and Gaspar Llamazares’ Izquierda Unida, whose votes had been necessary for the Socialist leader to reach La Moncloa.
In 2008, he went on to head Moratinos’ Cabinet, where, at the end of 2009, he played a leading role in the efforts to secure the return to El Aaiún of the Sahrawi activist Aminetu Haidar, after spending 32 days on hunger strike in Lanzarote. He never hid his sympathies for the Saharawi cause and in an interview he gave to the magazine ‘Sin Permiso’, of whose editorial committee he was a member, he said, after explaining his meeting with Aminetu Haidar: “Morocco only wanted to let Mrs Haidar return if she apologises and recognises the “Moroccan-ness” of the Sahara, which is not in accordance with international law because it is a disputed territory which, within the framework of the UN, must determine its definitive status through a process of negotiation, agreement between the parties and the exercise of the Saharawi people’s right to self-determination”.
In early 2011, Santos was appointed Ambassador Permanent Representative of Spain to the Office of the United Nations and International Organisations based in Geneva.
He served in the latter post for little more than a year, as he was relieved of his post after the PP came to power. He then went on to hold the consulates in Cape Town (between 2013 and 2017) and in Perpignan, from 2017 until his appointment as ambassador to the UN.
In November last year, the Minister of Defence, Margarita Robles, awarded Agustín Santos the Grand Cross of Military Merit with white badge “for his help in obtaining the command of the UNIFIL mission in Lebanon”.
In order to stand for election, Agustín Santos will have to resign from his post, which will remain vacant for several months until a new government is formed and another ambassador is appointed. Ana Jiménez de la Hoz, the current deputy permanent representative, will remain at the head of the mission, which has a large number of diplomats.
One of his last actions as ambassador took place yesterday, intervening in the so-called Committee of 24 of the United Nations, or Special Committee on Decolonisation, to defend Spain’s positions on Gibraltar, following the speech by the British colony’s chief minister, Fabián Picardo.
