Luis Ayllón
The Government will propose today at the meeting of Casa América’s Governing Council the appointment of the diplomat León de la Torre as the new director of the institution, to fill the vacancy left by Enrique Ojeda, who was recently appointed ambassador to Morocco, as The Diplomat has learned from reliable sources.
Casa América’s Governing Council is scheduled to meet today, with the aim of appointing the new director, who is proposed by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, but who must have the approval of the Community of Madrid and the City Council of the capital, which are the two other institutions that form part of the Council.
Reaching consensus is not always easy. At the end of 2020, both the Community and the City Council opposed for several months the Government’s proposal to appoint the former Socialist MP Borja Cabezón as director of Casa América. Only after the arrival of José Manuel Albares at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in July 2021 did the Government propose another candidate – Enrique Ojeda – with whom it was possible to achieve consensus between the three parties that make up the Governing Council of the public consortium.
Now, the Government is confident that the name of León de la Torre will be accepted by the Community and the City Council.
León de la Torre Krais is currently Ambassador of the Delegation of the European Union to Chile, a post he took up in August 2020, after having held the same position in Bolivia between 2016 and 2020.
A member of the diplomatic service since 1994, De la Torre has spent most of his professional career in LIbero-American countries. He was Spanish ambassador to Nicaragua between 2011 and 2014 and was previously posted to Ecuador and Chile, in the latter case as cultural counsellor.
He has also been posted to the Spanish Embassies in Beijing and Brussels and, between 2005 and 2006, he was Director of the Cabinet of the then President of the Constitutional Court, María Emilia Casas.
During his time as EU delegate in La Paz, he played a leading role in the mediation attempts following the departure from power of President Evo Morales in 2019 and the self-proclamation of Jeanine Áñez as interim president.
In December 2019, when tensions between Mexico and Bolivia escalated because the Mexican embassy in La Paz was hosting former collaborators of Morales, and episodes of harassment by the interim Bolivian government against the diplomatic representation were recorded, De la Torre sent a message to the European embassies saying that it would be ‘very positive’ to visit the ambassador to ‘make visible the European interest and concern’.
Two Spanish diplomats, following Madrid’s instructions, went to the embassy, protected by several members of the GEO, to try to help resolve the situation. However, the action provoked the unease of the Spanish government, which expelled the two diplomats, thus opening a crisis with Spain that lasted for ten months.
