Luis Ayllón
A large group of retired ambassadors have written a letter in which they openly criticise the behaviour of the diplomat Agustín Santos Maraver, ‘number two’ in the Sumar candidacy, led by Yolanda Díaz, and until recently Spain’s permanent representative to the United Nations.
The letter, which was sent to a national media outlet, and to which The Diplomat had access, reproaches Agustín Santos for writing articles in the online magazine “Sin Permiso”, under the pseudonym of Gustavo Buster, in open confrontation with the policy that he was supposed to defend as Spain’s representative at the UN.
After pointing out that “a diplomat’s raison d’être can be none other than the defence of his country’s interests by means of negotiation, persuasion and representation” and that he “must base his code of ethics on this”, the letter indicates that the politician “is oriented towards prioritising the successes of his party in accordance with his own initiative or with a specific programme”.
The retired ambassadors recall that there have always been diplomats who decided to abandon their profession for politics and “politicians with diplomatic hobbies”, as Francisco Silvela called them, who mutated from Parliament to the embassy. What has never existed since the origin of modern diplomacy,” they emphasise, “were both at the same time”. They add: “In this endeavour, it must be acknowledged that the model that emerged with Agustín Santos is statistically among the pioneers”.
The ambassadors also recall that, as head of the Foreign Minister’s Cabinet, Agustín Santos never asked anyone for permission to write, but they do not understand why, if he did not consider it necessary, he should have to “camouflage his ideas under a pseudonym”.
The letter highlights some inconsistencies in the position of the Sumar candidate, who has openly leftist ideas, such as having participated from Washington in the negotiation of the US military presence in Spain and the scheme for Spain’s participation in NATO, which earned him the decoration of Officer of Isabel the Catholic, In 1992, he was an advisor to the then Prime Minister, Felipe González, one of the architects of the ’78 Regime’ in the celebration of some of the successes of that regime, such as the Seville Expo, the Barcelona Olympic Games and the Ibero-American Summit in Madrid.
The letter stresses that “coincidences aside, what is certain is that Santos chose to work actively on issues that he now claims to abhor down to their very core” and wonders whether “he came to believe in all of this then and now regrets that atrocious world”.
The letter goes on to point out that another interpretation could be that Agustín Santos did not really believe in any of the things he contributed to and wonders why he did not resign from the select posts he held and why, “being an official Trotskyist, he did not shy away from receiving the Grand Cross of Military Merit for “establishing Spain’s position in the conflict with Russia”, no less than with the other NATO countries”.
Today,” say the retired ambassadors, “it is clear that Santos did not believe in any of that. Because this time, as ambassador to the UN, he has endeavoured to demonstrate in everyday practice that this double language, the language of what he does not believe in and what he really believes in, can coexist. Thus, the dichotomous mind of Santos-Buster corroborates that there can be two different discourses: that of Agustín Santos in New York and in the embassies, where he claims to defend the interests of the country he represents; and that of Gustavo Buster trying to demolish in the magazines everything that country stands for: Demolish the monarchy; demolish the parliamentary system of what he describes as “a regime of burdensome limits”; propitiate the “moral eviction” of the supporters of the free and democratic institutional framework such as the “Régimen del 78″; demolish the territorial concept of State and demolish participation in NATO and the EU”.
The letter also cites an article by Agustín Santos- Gustavo Buster in “Sin Permiso”, in which he states that “those who do not recognise the right to self-determination of a nation whose vast majority (sic) of the population demands it cannot raise their heads. Nor can anyone who lives under a monarchy imposed (sic) by one of Europe’s most bloodthirsty dictatorships of the 20th century and cannot choose the republic democratically”.
The ambassadors state that their purpose is to “expose the duplicity and inconsistency of someone who has been a representative of the Kingdom of Spain and its institutions”. “To defend or represent one thing and the opposite implies a very high dose of stupidity. As we do not believe that our colleague is stupid, the only alternative is to consider other motivations. What if it had all been well calculated personal interest? Agustín Santos has already written off his diplomatic career. He is two years away from retirement and with that timetable he knows that his ambassadorships are over. Now it’s Gustavo Buster’s turn to play, and if he’s lucky, to play in Parliament”, they say.
Finally, after quoting Ambassador Harold Nicholson who said that “the professional diplomat is subject to several loyalties: He owes it to his sovereign; to his government; to his minister; to his fellow diplomats; to his compatriots abroad and even to the country where he is accredited”, the letter points out that “Santos does not seem to have demonstrated, as a diplomat, any of these loyalties, except to himself“.
