The Diplomat
Two aircraft from the Air Force and Space Force, an A330 and an A400, arrived this Thursday at the Torrejón de Ardoz Air Base in Madrid, with more than 240 Spanish citizens who had asked to leave Lebanon due to the military escalation in the country due to the clashes between Israel and the Lebanese Shiite party-militia Hezbollah.
According to the Ministry of Defense, the first aircraft to arrive in Madrid was an A330 that had left Beirut with 204 people on board bound for Spain and that arrived at the Torrejón Base at around six in the afternoon. The second plane, an A400 that had taken off from Zaragoza, arrived in Spain at around 7:45 p.m. with forty people, according to sources from the Foreign Office, who added that with this second flight, the Department headed by José Manuel Albares “considers this evacuation operation to be successfully concluded.”
“I thank the Spanish Embassy in Lebanon and the Ministry of Defense for their collaboration and work in the evacuation of the Spaniards in Lebanon,” Albares said on his official account on the social network X. “From the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and our Embassy in Beirut we continue to work for the protection of our colony in Lebanon and monitor with the UN Assistant Secretary General for Peace Operations, Jean-Pierre Lacroix, the situation of UNIFIL (the UN mission in Lebanon, in which Spain has almost 700 troops),” he added.
Among the evacuees are Spanish citizens, some Lebanese relatives (around 40 citizens of this country), part of the staff of the Spanish Embassy (after the minister announced the day before that it was going to be reduced to the indispensable minimum) and some citizens of other countries (from Argentina, the USA, Italy, France, the United Kingdom and Venezuela), according to diplomatic sources to the Europa Press agency. Around a thousand Spaniards live in Lebanon, some with dual nationality or even Lebanese relatives.
Although the Minister of Defense, Margarita Robles, had announced on Tuesday the possible sending of a third aircraft to repatriate up to a total of 350 people, both Albares and Foreign Affairs have declared “the operation concluded” (with these two flights “the current operation initiated and coordinated by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs concludes successfully,” declared the minister through the social network X). Sources from the Ministry have stated that no new flights are planned, at least for the moment, because the rest of the Spanish citizens living in Lebanon have not expressed their desire to leave the country, despite the fact that the Foreign Minister himself had previously assured that around five hundred people had requested their evacuation.
On the other hand, sources from the PP have regretted, in statements to Europa Press, that the Government is not providing them with any type of information on the situation in the Middle East or on the sending of two Air Force planes to evacuate Spaniards. “No type of information. Nobody has called us,” they assured. Similarly, parliamentary sources from the People’s Group have indicated that it is “unprecedented” that nobody from the Executive has informed them.
