Luis Ayllón
His Majesty the King will be in charge of closing the Conference of Ambassadors, which will be held on the 10th and 11th, and which will be inaugurated by the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, according to diplomatic sources told The Diplomat.
To the meeting, which will be held at the headquarters of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in the Plaza del Marqués de Salamanca, and will carry the motto #DiplomaciaParaLaPaz, is expected to be attended by 128 Spanish ambassadors accredited in as many countries or multilateral organizations. In principle, the only one who will not be able to attend is the Spanish representative in Guatemala, José Laviña, who must remain in the country to receive Don Felipe on the 13th, who will be present at the inauguration of the new Guatemalan president, Bernardo Arévalo.
On the opening day tomorrow, Wednesday, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares, will deliver a few words, after which he will give way to the intervention of the Chief Executive.
The rest of the day will be dedicated, fundamentally, to holding meetings between the different State Secretaries with the ambassadors in the countries in their area. These meetings are of particular interest due to the fact that the four State Secretaries have just taken up their positions and it will be the first time that they have contact with the ambassadors who work in the countries under their jurisdiction.
Four ministers are scheduled to speak on Thursday. The first of them will be the new head of Economy, Commerce and Business, Carlos Cuerpo, and will be followed by the Ministers of Defense, Margarita Robles; Interior, Fernando Grande-Marlaska; and Industry and Tourism, Jordi Hereu, who will also make his debut before the ambassadors.
The Ibero-American Secretary General, Andrés Allamand, will also speak on the same day before the ambassadors.
Likewise, the program includes meetings with the director of the Cervantes Institute, Luis García Montero; and with the director of the Spanish Agency for International Cooperation and Development (Aecid), Anton Leis. The closing will take place on Thursday afternoon, with a speech from the King.
In a text sent by the Undersecretary of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Luis Cuesta, to the ambassadors and to which The Diplomat had access, it is stated that the objective of the Conference is to analyze the priorities of Spanish foreign policy for the coming years, at the beginning of a new legislature, as well as the results of the last Presidency of the Council of the EU, which concluded on December 31.
Likewise, it is indicated that the meeting will serve “to convey to the heads of Mission the main developments and relevant information about the functioning of the Ministry, as well as to evaluate and contrast our foreign policy in the respective geographical or sectoral areas together with the main authorities of the Ministry ”.
The Ambassadors’ Conferences began to be developed in Spain, with a format similar to that used in other neighboring countries, in 2001 with the Government of José María Aznar and for a time they were held annually. In 2008, when José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero was head of the Executive, they stopped being held, among other reasons, due to the cost of transferring all the ambassadors to Spain at a time of economic crisis.
González Laya called the 2021 Conference with the intention of recovering the annual frequency, but due to the persistence of restrictions due to the COVID-19 pandemic, only a few were able to go to Madrid and the rest had to follow the meetings by videoconference. In 2022 the meeting was not called and in 2023, Albares recovered it. They are normally celebrated at the beginning of the year, to take advantage of the fact that many ambassadors are already in Spain spending a few days of vacation on the occasion of Christmas.
