<h6><strong>The Diplomat</strong></h6> <h4><strong>The Government of Equatorial Guinea has maintained its embassy without an ambassador since almost nine months ago, when the president of the country, Teodoro Obiang, decided to recall Miguel Edjang Angue, who was in charge of the diplomatic representation.</strong></h4> The recall occurred in mid-March, after the judge of the National Court Santiago Pedraz issued an arrest warrant against Carmelo Ovono Obiagn, one of the sons of the Equatorial Guinean president, for the kidnapping and disappearance of four members of the Movement for the Liberation of Equatorial Guinea. The arrest of the four people took place in November 2019 on charges of attempting to perpetrate a coup d'état. Two of the detainees - Efa Mangue and Obama Mefuman (now deceased) - were of Spanish nationality and were sentenced in a military trial to prison terms of 90 and 70 years, respectively. Relations between Madrid and Malabo have been practically paralyzed since then, and the Teodoro Obiang regime is facilitating very little action and contacts with <strong>the Spanish ambassador in Malabo, Javier Conde Martínez de Irujo</strong>, limiting them to what is strictly necessary, according to diplomatic sources consulted by The Diplomat. El País, for its part, reported on July 15 that Obiang ignored requests from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for the Spanish ambassador to be able to see the prisoners. And in that same month, as highlighted by the website of the Government of the former Spanish colony, the vice president, Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mangue, blamed the leaders of the Spanish Embassy for what he described as a corrupt scheme for the collection of more than 216 million CFA francs in visas denied to Equatorial Guineans in the last four years. However, according to the same sources, at one point there was talk of a possible meeting between the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Simeón Oyono Esono, Angue, and his Spanish colleague, José Manuel Albares, taking advantage of the presence of both in New York, in September, for the General Assembly of the United Nations, but it is not known that it ever took place.
