Trump selects Cuban-American businessman Benjamin Leon Jr as ambassador to Spain

Eduardo González Cuban-American businessman Benjamin Leon Jr will be the next US ambassador to Madrid, President-elect Donald Trump announced on his account on the social network Truth. “I am pleased to announce that Benjamin Leon Jr. will serve as the next United States Ambassador to Spain,” Trump wrote on Thursday. “Benjamin is a highly successful entrepreneur, equestrian, and philanthropist. He came to the U.S. from Communist Cuba at 16-years-old, with only Five Dollars in his pocket, and proceeded to build his company, Leon Medical Centers, into an incredible business,” he continued. “He has helped support many worthy causes, like La Liga Contra el Cáncer, and important Medical Research at Johns Hopkins and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute,” added Donald Trump. “Benjamin has also invested in training our future doctors and nurses by supporting Miami-Dade College’s Benjamin Leon Jr. School of Nursing, and the Benjamin Leon Center for Geriatric Research and Education at Florida International University’s Herbert Wertheim College of Medicine,” he concluded. The appointment of León (born in 1944 in Oriente, Cuba, and who emigrated to Miami in 1961) still needs to be approved by the Senate, which seems more than certain given the Republican majority in the House. The US Embassy in Madrid has been vacant since last July, when Julissa Reynoso, ambassador since January 2022, left the post to rejoin the law firm Winston & Strawn and join the Democratic campaign in the US presidential elections. Since then, the highest representation of the United States in Spain has been held by the Minister Counselor, Rian Harris, in her capacity as Chargé d'Affaires of the Embassy. Benjamin Leon Jr., 80 years old and a donor to the Republican Party, will take office amid tensions generated in Spain and in the EU as a whole by the arrival of Trump to the White House and by his foreseeable influence on such important issues as the possible imposition of tariffs on certain European and Spanish products (specifically, on Spanish black table olives or on steel and aluminum exports from Europe, which also affect Spain) or foreign policy with respect to Ukraine and NATO. Experts in relations between Spain and the United States, consulted by The Diplomat, are convinced that there will be no changes in what affects the military and security sphere. For Washington, the key element of its relationship with Spain is the Defence Cooperation Agreement and the maintenance of the agreements that allow the Pentagon to have five NATO Anti-Missile Shield destroyers at the Rota naval base at the moment (with another one expected to arrive next year). In any case, in the expectation that the United States will now demand more forcefully from Europe a greater contribution to the budget of the Atlantic Alliance, Spain is not in the best situation, because with 1.28 percent of its Gross Domestic Product (GDP), it is the member state that invests the least in defence of all the NATO countries. However, it does not seem that, on the bilateral aspect, there is any concern about possible changes in relations in the military field, but there is in others, because Trump has no sympathy at all for the president of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, who, in any case, did not even wait for the official results to congratulate him on his recent victory in the presidential elections.

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