<h6><strong>Eduardo González</strong></h6> <strong>Former Minister of Foreign Affairs Alfonso Dastis is among the nine diplomats who will be promoted this Tuesday by the Council of Ministers to the professional category of ambassador, according to diplomatic sources who have informed <em>The Diplomat.</em></strong> Among the nine first-class plenipotentiary ministers who will be promoted, all of them with a long career in the Diplomatic Career and some about to reach retirement age, stands out <strong>Alfonso Dastis</strong>, current ambassador of Spain in Hungary and who was Minister of Foreign Affairs between 2016 and 2018, during the last stage of Mariano Rajoy (PP) in the Government. He was also ambassador to the Netherlands (2004-2011), ambassador permanent representative to the European Union (2011-2016) and ambassador to Italy (2018-2022). According to a notice issued by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which <a href="https://thediplomatinspain.com/en/2024/11/05/the-government-will-replace-at-least-twenty-ambassadors-during-the-next-year/"><strong><em>The Diplomat</em></strong></a> had access to last November, Dastis is among the twenty ambassadors that the Government plans to replace over the next year. The sources consulted indicated that Dastis will continue as ambassador to Hungary until his retirement, since he will turn 70 (mandatory retirement age for diplomats) on October 5, 2025. Another of those promoted is <strong>Fidel Sendagorta</strong>, current ambassador of Spain in Japan and a man with an extensive career as a diplomat, which has included, among others, the positions of director general for the Mediterranean, Maghreb and the Middle East, director general for North America, Asia and the Pacific, director general of Foreign Policy and Security, secretary general of the Spain-United States Council Foundation and ambassador of Spain in Egypt. Also among those promoted is <strong>Ramón Santos</strong>, who will turn 70 next summer and who exactly two years ago, in December 2022, became Spain's first ambassador to Venezuela in two years, which allowed him to experience first-hand all the controversy generated by the departure to Spain of the opposition presidential candidate Edmundo González Urrutia. He was replaced at the beginning of this month by Álvaro Albacete. Among those promoted was also <a href="https://thediplomatinspain.com/en/2024/12/13/the-undersecretary-of-foreign-affairs-praises-his-predecessor-beatriz-larrotcha-on-the-occasion-of-her-death/"><strong>Beatriz Larrotcha</strong></a>, undersecretary at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs during the time of Alfonso Dastis, but the veteran diplomat died on December 3 in Madrid at the age of 65 after a long illness. The list also includes <strong>Guillermo Martínez-Correcher, current consul general in Guadalajara (Mexico); María Bassols Delgado, the woman who occupies the highest position among first-class female plenipotentiary ministers and current ambassador to the Conference on Disarmament; Alfonso Díez Torres, currently second in command of the Spanish Embassy in Egypt; Pilar Ruiz Carnicero, who is currently serving in the Subdirectorate General for Candidate Countries, Countries of the European Economic Area and other European Countries of the Directorate General for Western, Central and South-Eastern Europe; Carlos Sáenz de Tejada Gorman, current consul general in Chengdu (China); and Manuel Hernández Ruigómez, current Consul General of Spain in Mexico.</strong> According to the aforementioned diplomatic sources, the Ministry has avoided any “ideological discrimination” when promoting this group of diplomats to the category of Ambassador, the highest in the Diplomatic Career. The same sources assured that the Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares, is especially interested in also moving towards gender parity in this type of promotion, even taking into account how difficult it is to achieve this objective among veteran diplomats who have carried out their work in times of clear male predominance.
