The Diplomat
The Council of Ministers will today appoint Fernando García Casas, current consul general in Buenos Aires, as the new ambassador in La Paz (Bolivia), according to Foreign Ministry sources informed The Diplomat.
The Embassy in Bolivia had remained vacant since January, when the previous ambassador, Javier Gassó, was appointed general director for Latin America.
Fernando García Casas was State Secretary for International Cooperation and Ibero-America (SECIPI) from 2016 to 2018 and, subsequently, ambassador in Brasilia from 2018 to 2022. Previously he had been director of the Department of Studies and International Relations of the Presidency of the Government with the President José María Aznar (2009-2002), Chief of Staff of the Ibero-American General Secretariat with Enrique V. Iglesias (2008-2012) and ambassador to Estonia.
The same sources indicated that García Casas is not the first appointment from the previous stage of Mariano Rajoy. In this regard, they recalled that, when Josep Borrell was Minister of Foreign Affairs, the main senior officials of Foreign Ministry during Mariano Rajoy’s Government were appointed ambassadors: Alfonso Dastis, who had been Minister of Foreign Affairs, was appointed ambassador in Rome; Ildefonso Castro, former State Secretary for Foreign Affairs, was appointed ambassador in Dublin; Jorge Toledo, former State Secretary for the European Union, was appointed ambassador in Tokyo; García Casas himself was appointed ambassador to Brazil.
In addition, Bernardo de Sicart, who had been head of the International Department of the Presidency of the Government, was appointed ambassador to Luxembourg; Jorge Moragas, who had been director of the Presidential Cabinet and Ambassador Permanent Representative to the United Nations, was appointed ambassador to the Philippines; José Ramón García Hernández, deputy in several legislatures (X, XI and XII, until April 2019) and secretary of International Relations of the Popular Party, was appointed ambassador in Oslo; and Beatriz Larrotcha, former undersecretary, was appointed Ambassador in Brussels.
Subsequently, and when José Manuel Albares was already Minister, both Alfonso Dastis and Jorge Moragas received new Heads of Mission, specifically in Budapest and Dar es-Salam, in Tanzania, respectively.
