The Diplomat
The Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares, received yesterday in Madrid the Prime Minister of Peru, Alberto Otárola, and his Peruvian counterpart, Ana Gervasi, who thanked him for Spain’s “valuable support” for Peru’s candidacy to join the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).
Otárola and Gervasi have been in Spain since this weekend on the first stage of a tour of Europe that will take them to the OECD Ministerial meeting, where they will present the first draft of the document that will allow the accession process to begin. The meeting will be held in Paris on June 7 and 8 and will also be attended by Albares.
Otárola’s agenda in Spain, which will conclude today, includes meetings with the third vice-president and minister for Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge, Teresa Ribera; the presidents of the Congress and the Senate, the secretary general of the Ibero-American General Secretariat (SEGIB), Andrés Allamand; the trustees of the Spain-Peru Council Foundation and the director of the Cervantes Institute, Luis García Montero, among others. The purpose of these meetings, according to the Peruvian Government, is to “strengthen the historical ties between Peru and the Kingdom of Spain and the cooperation between both countries”.
During yesterday’s meeting, Otárola thanked “the valuable support of Spain for Peru’s candidacy to the OECD”. Spain has repeatedly supported the Andean country’s accession to the organization, a process that began in 2012. The start of talks was authorized by the OECD Council in January 2022.
For his part, as reported by the Peruvian Foreign Ministry in a press release, Albares reiterated his “institutional and constitutional” support for President Dina Boluarte and expressed the desire of the Government of Pedro Sánchez that the president participate in the Summit between the European Union and the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC), scheduled for mid-July in Brussels in the framework of the Spanish Presidency of the Council of the EU. In addition, the minister renewed Spain’s commitment to prioritize investments in Peru.
“Meeting with the President of the Council of Ministers and the Chancellor of Peru,” Albares reported via Twitter. “We discussed relations between Spain and Peru and EU-Latin America relations during the Spanish Presidency,” he continued. “Spain will continue to strengthen Ibero-American cooperation to face global challenges”, he concluded.
On December 7, 2022, the same day of the failed self-coup of former President Pedro Castillo, the Spanish Government issued a communiqué in which it “firmly condemned the rupture of the constitutional order in Peru” and welcomed “the reestablishment of democratic normality”, after Pedro Castillo’s decision to dissolve the national Congress and decree a government of exception, which led to his removal from office and his subsequent arrest. In the same communiqué, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs assured that “Spain will always be on the side of democracy and the defense of constitutional legality”. Also on the same day of the self-coup, the Congress of the Republic appointed, by constitutional mandate, the then vice-president Dina Boluarte as president, who became the first woman to become head of state in Peru.
Gervasi’s article
As a prelude to her trip to Spain, Ana Gervasi published this past Sunday an opinion article in Peru’s Diario Correo in which she highlighted the “144 years of nurtured bilateral relations” between the two countries, which are reflected in “a trail of commercial, investment, cooperation and political understanding milestones that reached its climax in 2015 with the establishment of a Strengthened Strategic Partnership”.
She also stated that the Government of Spain was “one of the first- to offer “its recognition and support to the administration of President Dina Boluarte, and to the constitutional and institutional strengthening of the country”. “This is not the first time that Spain has shown its firm support for Peru, since its support was key for the ratification of the Multiparty Trade Agreement between Peru and the European Union, the exoneration of visas for Peruvians in the Schengen area and the invitation to Peru to begin its process of accession to the OECD”, she continued.
According to the Chancellor, economic relations between Peru and Spain “continue to strengthen, being this country one of our first strategic partners in the EU with trade exchange figures that exceeded 2.5 billion dollars in 2022, and the flow of Spanish investment to Peru reflects the confidence in our macroeconomic stability, with investment commitments amounting to 45 billion dollars in the last thirty years, in the services, energy and infrastructure sectors”.
She also highlighted the role of culture as a “transversal axis” of the bilateral relationship and recalled, in this regard, that the last IX International Congress of the Spanish Language (CILE), held in Cadiz, “maintained Peru’s proposal to analyze the relationship of the Spanish language with the native languages of the American continent on the basis of miscegenation and interculturalism, to which our country has contributed greatly with characters of the stature of Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, Cesar Vallejo, Jose Maria Arguedas and Mario Vargas Llosa.” “The next edition of CILE will be in Arequipa, an opportunity for our country to continue strengthening the historical-cultural links between Ibero-American nations,” she added.
Gervasi also recalled the “human side”, referring to the “excellent degree of integration of migrant communities has allowed nearly 300,000 Peruvians to live in Spain, while Peru is home to an increasingly large and thriving Spanish community.” “In our next working visit to Spain, together with Premier Otárola, we will continue to strengthen the channels of cooperation with a vision of shared development, walking hand in hand to contribute to the welfare of our societies, which are and will always be sisters in their history, culture and values,” she concluded.
