Eduardo González
The Undersecretary of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Xavier Martí Martí, has praised the diplomat and his predecessor in office Beatriz Larrotcha, who died on December 3 in Madrid at the age of 65 after a long illness.
Born in Jaén in 1959, a graduate in Law and a member of the diplomatic service since 1987, Larrotcha was assigned to diplomatic representations in Algeria, Belgium and Peru, and to the Permanent Representation of Spain to the European Union.
She was also a delegate of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the Barcelona 92 Olympic Organising Committee, deputy director general of Patrimonial Affairs and advisor in the General Inspection of Services, in the Diplomatic Information Office, in the Diplomatic Information Office and in the General Directorate of Spaniards Abroad and Consular and Migratory Affairs.
In 2012 she served as director of the Office of the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs and, in 2017, she was appointed undersecretary in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs by the then head of the Department, Alfonso Dastis. Her term ended in July 2018 with the arrival of the PSOE to the Government.
She was then appointed ambassador of Spain in Belgium, which forced her to counter, through public diplomacy, attempts to undermine the image of Spain due to the political crisis in Catalonia, which was experienced with particular intensity in that country. She was also involved in helping the Spanish colony in Belgium during the COVID-19 pandemic. She was dismissed as ambassador in 2022, after which she was assigned to the General Directorate of North America, Asia and the Pacific, until illness prevented her from continuing in her position.
With a reputation for being a good negotiator, she was married to the diplomat Bernardo de Sicart, former director of the International Department in the Presidency of the Government during the Mariano Rajoy era.
According to sources from Foreign Ministry informed The Diplomat, the current undersecretary of the Ministry went to the funeral home and told her husband, De Sicart, “the extraordinary personal and professional criteria he had of her.”
