<h6><strong>The Diplomat</strong></h6> <h4><strong>The headquarters of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the Plaza del Marqués de Salamanca, in Madrid, hosts from this Monday the IX Conference of Ambassadors, in which the 130 representatives of Spain accredited throughout the world will reflect on the challenges of the international political situation in the new year.</strong></h4> The meeting will be inaugurated by the Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares. The President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, will open the session on Tuesday, January 14, and King Felipe VI will close the Conference. This year, the event will also feature the participation of the Ministers of Economy, Carlos Cuerpo; Interior, Fernando Grande-Marlaska; and Defense, Margarita Robles. The Indian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, will also participate in the debates, who will later hold a meeting with Albares at the ministerial headquarters of the Viana Palace. There will also be working groups in which the Secretaries of State of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, European Union and Cooperation will participate; the Undersecretary and the Directors of AECID and the Cervantes Institute. At this meeting, which will be held under the motto “A foreign policy with its own identity” (one of the most used by Albares in recent times), the 130 Spanish ambassadors accredited throughout the world will reflect on the challenges of the international political situation in the new year. The Ambassadors' Conferences began to be held in Spain, with a format similar to that used in other countries in our environment, in 2001 with the Government of José María Aznar and for a time they were held annually. In 2008, with José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero as head of the Executive, they stopped being held, among other reasons, due to the cost involved in transferring all the ambassadors to Spain at a time of economic crisis. The then Minister of Foreign Affairs, Arancha González Laya, called the 2021 Conference with the intention of returning to an annual meeting, but due to the persistence of restrictions due to the COVID-19 pandemic, only a few were able to attend Madrid and the rest had to follow the meetings by videoconference. In 2022, the meeting was not called and in 2023, Albares brought it back. They are normally held at the beginning of the year, to take advantage of the fact that many ambassadors are already in Spain spending a few days on holiday for Christmas.
