Cecilia Robles becomes the second woman to head the Diplomatic School

Eduardo González The diplomat Cecilia Robles has been chosen by the Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares, to take over the direction of the Diplomatic School, a position that had been vacant since last August, according to the newspaper Confidencial Digital and confirmed by sources from the Ministry to The Diplomat. With her appointment, she becomes the second woman to reach the position since the creation of this institution in 1942. Until 11 November, Robles held the post of Director General of the United Nations, International Organisations and Human Rights. Born in Madrid in 1969, a graduate in Classical Philology and a member of the Diplomatic Service since 1997, Robles has been posted to the Spanish embassies in Luanda and Nouakchott and has been deputy consul in Brussels. In the central services of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Robles has worked in the General Directorate of Legal and Consular Affairs and in the General Directorates for Asia and the Pacific and for Latin America. In the multilateral sphere, she has been deputy director of the Human Rights Office; counsellor at the Permanent Mission of Spain to the United Nations in New York and advisory member in the General Directorate of the United Nations, Human Rights and International Organisations. In 2021, she was appointed Director General of the United Nations, International Organizations and Human Rights. Robles fills the vacancy left at the Diplomatic School by Santiago Miralles, who left the post last August to take up the position of Consul General of Spain in Edinburgh. Since then, Nicolás Cimarra Etchenique has been in charge of the Diplomatic School, as deputy director. Miralles has held the post since the summer of 2022. With the appointment of Cecilia Robles, José Manuel Albares' wish to give a woman the direction of the Diplomatic School is fulfilled. As the aforementioned digital newspaper recalls, the minister himself regretted, during a visit to the School, the lack of women in the portrait gallery of the former directors. To date, only one woman had headed the Diplomatic School since its creation in 1942: María Isabel Vicandi, who did so between October 2002 and May 2003, in the last Government of José María Aznar and with Ana Palacio as Minister of Foreign Affairs. Precisely, Robles' appointment occurs not only a few days before the course begins at the Diplomatic School, on December 10, but coincides with the arrival of the second promotion of the Diplomatic Career (76) with more women than men in history, 17 compared to eleven. The first promotion with more women than men was the LXXIV, approved in December 2022 and developed in 2023, in which there were 21 women and 14 men, up to a total of 35 places. The first equal promotion was the previous one, the LXXIII, with 17 men and 17 women. The number of women entering the Diplomatic Service has increased over the last few years. According to data provided by the Ministry in March 2021, Spain has 687 male and 279 female diplomats.

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