Palestine, Milei, Sheinbaum, Venezuela, Ukraine and Ribera: the review of 2024, the year of the 10th anniversary of ‘The Diplomat’

Eduardo González The recognition of the State of Palestine by the Government of Pedro Sánchez, the diplomatic disagreements with Argentina and Mexico, the derivation towards Spanish internal politics of the presidential elections in Venezuela, the signing of the Cooperation Agreement on Security between Spain and Ukraine, the entry of Teresa Ribera into the European Commission and, of course, the celebration of the tenth anniversary of The Diplomat are among the mainstays of the year that ends tomorrow, 2024. Middle East One of the most intense moments for Spanish diplomacy occurred on May 28, when the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, announced to the press that the Council of Ministers had just officially recognized the State of Palestine. Spain's decision was adopted simultaneously by Ireland and Norway. As a result, Israel's Foreign Minister, Israel Katz, summoned the ambassadors of Spain (Ana Solomon), Ireland and Norway to Tel Aviv to warn them that the recognition of the State of Palestine by their respective governments would have "serious" consequences for bilateral relations. On June 6, Albares announced to the press Spain's intention to join the procedure initiated by South Africa before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on the Application of the Convention for the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide in the Gaza Strip. The ICJ had issued preliminary measures to protect the Palestinian civilian population in the Gaza Strip and for Israel to end the Rafah military operation and allow access to humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip (medicines, food, fuel and water) by opening the border crossings. On November 21, the first intergovernmental meeting between Spain and Palestine was held in Madrid, which concluded with a Joint Declaration in which the two parties called for “a complete ceasefire” in the Gaza Strip, condemned “any act of violence against civilians, including all acts of terrorism,” defended an International Conference to implement the two-state solution and demanded “the end of the Israeli occupation.” In addition, Spain committed 75 million euros in bilateral cooperation through the AECID during the meeting. In this context, and in the midst of the intensification of the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hezbollah, the Government of Benjamin Netanyahu launched a ground invasion of Lebanon on October 1. In retaliation, Iran attacked Israel with ballistic missiles. Both Pedro Sánchez and José Manuel Albares condemned the bombing launched by Iran against Israel and demanded that “this spiral of violence ends now.” On October 26, Israel bombed several military installations in Iran. Over the past few months, Spain has repeatedly condemned the attacks against the UN mission in Lebanon, both those carried out by Israel and those perpetrated by Hezbollah. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs summoned the chargé d'affaires of the Israeli Embassy in Madrid to convey its complaint on this matter. In mid-October, Netanyahu demanded the withdrawal of UNIFIL, considering that its troops had become “human shields.” This call was rejected by Spain, among other countries. On November 26, Netanyahu announced a 60-day ceasefire agreement in Lebanon, which was welcomed by the Spanish Government, considering it “an indispensable condition for addressing the humanitarian situation in Lebanon and proceeding with the full implementation of Resolution 1701 of the United Nations Security Council.” On December 8, the jihadist military group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) overthrew Syrian President Bashar al-Assad after 24 years in power, after which the Spanish government called on “all parties in Syria, in the region and in the international community” to allow “a peaceful and inclusive political transition” in the country. On December 23, the Council of Ministers appointed diplomat Antonio González-Zavala as special envoy for Syria. Argentina Another focus of the diplomatic year was the conflict with Argentina. In mid-May, President Javier Milei made a trip to Spain that did not include any meeting with the King or Pedro Sánchez and in which he took advantage of his speech at a Vox event to (without expressly mentioning the President of the Government or his wife, Begoña Gómez, but in clear reference to both) attack “socialism” and “people stuck in power (...) even if they have a corrupt wife and take five days to think about it.” The Argentine president's words came days after statements by the Minister of Transport, Óscar Puente, suggesting that Milei “ingested substances,” which caused a first diplomatic clash between Madrid and Buenos Aires. After Milei's words, Albares called his ambassador in Buenos Aires, María Jesús Alonso, for consultations and demanded that the Argentine president apologize. Milei returned to Spain on June 21 to receive the Juan de Mariana Freedom Award. During this second trip, she received the International Medal of the Community of Madrid from the hands of the regional president, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, before whom she lashed out against politicians who “have porous hands”, whether “directly, from a brother or from a partner”, words that were interpreted in very different ways (since they could be applied both to Sánchez, as Milei intended, and to Díaz Ayuso herself). Venezuela The most tense moments of the diplomatic year, especially due to its politicization in Spain, occurred after the presidential elections of July 28 in Venezuela, in which President Nicolás Maduro was declared the winner against the opposition candidate Edmundo González Urrutia amid alleged irregularities, which caused numerous South American states to refuse to recognize the results and even suspend diplomatic relations with the Maduro government. The electoral records published by the opposition give González Urrutia the victory in the elections, but the National Electoral Council (CNE) officially proclaimed Maduro's victory. In these circumstances, the two chambers of the Spanish Parliament, the Congress and the Senate, approved, on the initiative of the PP and with the vote against the PSOE, two non-legislative proposals in which the Government was urged to recognize González Urrutia as the “elected president” of Venezuela. To date, the Spanish Government has insisted on demanding the publication of the records as a condition for recognizing the electoral results and has chosen (like most of the 27 States of the EU and the Ibero-American community) not to recognize, for the moment, González as “elected president”. On September 8, Edmundo González Urrutia fled his country after an arrest warrant was issued against him and was flown from Caracas by a Spanish Air Force plane to Madrid, where he requested political asylum, which was granted in mid-December. González Urrutia's transfer to Spain generated a strong controversy between the Government and the PP, after the Venezuelan opposition candidate assured that, during his stay at the residence of the Spanish ambassador in Caracas, representatives of Nicolás Maduro's Government had made him sign, as a condition for receiving a safe-conduct to leave the country, a document in which he accepted the decision of the Supreme Court of Justice of his country to validate Maduro's victory. After this information, the PP accused Sánchez's Executive of being a "necessary collaborator" of Maduro. In the midst of the uproar, González Urrutia released a statement in which he assured that he had not been "coerced by either the Government of Spain or the Spanish ambassador in Venezuela, Ramón Santos." As a result, Albares asked the Popular Party to apologize for the “slander and insults” against Ramón Santos and the “Spanish foreign service” as a whole. Mexico Continuing with Latin America, another tense diplomatic moment occurred in Médico, when the new president, Claudia Sheinbaum, decided to exclude King Felipe VI from the list of guests to her inauguration (on October 1) for not having responded to a letter from the outgoing president, Andrés López Obrador, in which he was urged to apologize for the Spanish conquest. The Government of Spain described this decision as “unacceptable” and announced that it would not participate in the inauguration “at any level.” The event was attended by members of Sumar, a minority partner in the coalition government, in a personal capacity. The King represents Spain at the inaugurations of Ibero-American presidents, a task that Don Felipe has been assuming since 1996 when he was still Prince of Asturias. Specifically, the Monarch attended the inauguration of Sheinbaum's predecessor, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, in 2018. An Ibero-American Summit with minimal resources In these circumstances, King Felipe VI and Albares attended the XXIX Ibero-American Summit in mid-November, held in Ecuador, at the end of which the Pro Tempore Secretariat was transferred to Spain, which will hold it until the next Summit, scheduled for our country in 2026. The XXX Ibero-American Summit was characterized, above all, by the absence of all the presidents of the region, with the exception of the host, the Ecuadorian Daniel Noboa. As heads of state, only the European leaders attended in Cuenca: Felipe VI, the president of Portugal, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, and the head of government, Xavier Espot. The King was accompanied by José Manuel Albares, who participated as the highest representative of the Government after Pedro Sánchez announced that he would not travel to Ecuador to closely follow the DANA crisis in Valencia. Claudia Sheinbaum did not attend after her country had broken diplomatic relations with Ecuador in response to Noboa's order to storm the Mexican Embassy in Quito to arrest former Ecuadorian vice president Jorge Glas, convicted of corruption and who had received political asylum from the Mexican authorities. Venezuela (Ecuador had recognized Edmundo González Urrutia as president-elect) and Nicaragua (which have also broken relations with Ecuador for the same reason) did not even send a representative. Ukraine Another highlight of the diplomatic year was the visit to Madrid on May 27 by the president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, in which he signed with Pedro Sánchez the Agreement on Security Cooperation between Spain and Ukraine, according to which our country agrees to send Kyiv a package of military aid valued at 1.129 billion euros. Zelensky was previously received with honours by the King in Barajas and went to the Royal Palace to hold a meeting with Felipe VI, whom he invited to visit Ukraine “when they can”. The signing of the agreement did not please Sumar at all, who criticised the “opacity” of the PSOE and regretted that, during the Council of Ministers in which the aforementioned allocation of 1,129 million euros for defence was approved, it was not reported that its objective was the sending of weapons to Ukraine. On 19 November, the Spanish Government reiterated its condemnation of “the illegal and unjustified aggression of Russia against Ukraine”, on the occasion of “one thousand days since its beginning”, and expressed its support for “the efforts aimed at achieving a fair, complete and lasting peace based on international law and the Charter of the United Nations, including the sovereignty and territorial integrity” of the country. Gibraltar The news about Gibraltar was dominated by three specific events: the resumption in Brussels of high-level negotiations on the future integration of the colony in the EU after Brexit, the first meetings in two years between Albares and representatives of the Junta de Andalucía and the municipalities of Campo de Gibraltar to explain to them the evolution of the negotiations, and the decision of the British Government to bring forward the legislative elections, which gave victory to the Labour Party and forced the postponement of the negotiations in Brussels until after the summer. European elections and Teresa Ribera On June 9, the European elections were held in Spain and other countries, amid a worsening of the political polarisation between PSOE and PP and a week after Parliament approved the amnesty law. In Spain, the PP won the elections with 22 of the 61 seats, 34.18 percent of the votes and nine seats more than in the previous elections in 2019. It was followed by the PSOE, with 20 seats, four percentage points less and one seat less. Next came Vox, with six seats, 9.62 percent and two more seats; Repúblicas (4.9%), Sumar (4.6%, three more seats) and Se Acabó la Fiesta (SALF, 4.5%), with three seats each. After the elections, the process of institutional renewal began in Europe. The first European Summit of the legislature ratified the agreement already reached by the Popular Party, Socialists and Liberals for Ursula von der Leyen to repeat as head of the European Commission, António Costa to preside over the Council and Kaja Kallas to be the new High Representative for Foreign and Security Policy, despite the resistance of the governments of Italy and Hungary. As regards Spain, the candidate to replace Borrell as our country's representative on the Commission was the third vice-president and minister for the Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge, Teresa Ribera, head of the PSOE list in the European elections. However, Ribera's appointment was hampered by pressure from the PP on its partners in the European People's Party (EPP) to veto her candidacy in protest at her handling of the DANA crisis. This blockage triggered a domino effect that paralysed the approval of the rest of the vice-presidencies. Finally, the European Parliament approved the new Von der Leyen Commission at the end of November, in which Teresa Ribera was appointed to the positions of Executive Vice-President for the Clean, Fair and Competitive Transition and Commissioner for Competition, after the leaders of the three main parliamentary groups, EPP, S&D and RE, reached an agreement so that the new Community Executive could come into force on December 1. The Spanish Popular Party voted against the new Commission, as a sign of its rejection of Ribera. Trump's victory On the other hand, Pedro Sánchez did not wait until the end of the vote count to congratulate Republican Donald Trump on his victory in the US presidential elections and to commit to continue working with him on "strategic bilateral relations" and in favour of "a solid transatlantic partnership". The second vice-president and leader of Sumar, Yolanda Díaz, declared that "Trump's victory is bad news for all citizens". Tenth anniversary of The Diplomat On October 15, the cocktail party commemorating the tenth anniversary of The Diplomat in Spain was held in Madrid, where the beginnings, challenges and editorial and professional career of our newspaper, currently incorporated into the Prestomedia Group, were reviewed. Representatives of thirty Embassies accredited in Spain and personalities linked to Foreign Action and diplomatic information in our country attended.

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