The Diplomat
The Council of Ministers approved yesterday the appointment of Enrique Ojeda to the position of Spanish ambassador to Morocco, as The Diplomat announced the 12th.
Ojeda is an experienced diplomat who, since July 2021 and to date, served as director of the Casa América public consortium. Previously, he was ambassador to Chile, Bolivia and El Salvador. Likewise, he has held various diplomatic positions in the Spanish embassies in the United Kingdom, Bolivia, Guatemala and in the Spanish consulate general in New York.
Enrique Ojeda was also, between 2004 and 2008, director of the Tres Culturas Foundation, an organization created in 1998 by the Government of Andalusia and the Kingdom of Morocco, and which was later joined by the Palestinian Authority and the Peres Center for Peace. , to promote dialogue between peoples, cultures and religions of the Mediterranean. After his time at the Foundation, Enrique Ojeda was, for almost a year, general secretary of Foreign Action of the Junta de Andalucía and, later, general director of Autonomous Cooperation in the Ministry of Territorial Policy.
Ojeda replaces Ricardo Díez-Hochleitner, who had been ambassador in Rabat for eight and a half years and who turned 70 last June, the maximum retirement age for diplomats. Such a long period of time at the head of an Embassy is unusual for Spanish diplomatic practices, but circumstances led the Government of Pedro Sánchez to keep Díez-Hochleitner in the position due to the serious deterioration of relations with Morocco in May 2021, when Rabat called its ambassador in Madrid, Karima Benyaich, for consultations, in protest of Spain’s reception of the leader of the Polisario Front, Brahim Ghali.
The presence in Rabat of Díez-Hochleitner, well regarded by Mohamed VI’s entourage, helped calm the storm, which ended when, in March 2022, the Government reversed Spain’s traditional position and supported the autonomy proposal. of Morocco for Western Sahara. In this situation, with Morocco delighted by this change in position, the replacement of the ambassador was not considered appropriate, and with the prospect of holding a High Level Meeting between the two countries in February 2023, Sánchez chose to keep Díez Hochleitner . The electoral processes that followed practically made change impossible in the following months.
