<h6><strong>Eduardo González</strong></h6> <h4><strong>The Government has requested the approval of José Ramón García Hernández, former executive secretary of International Relations of the People's Party (PP), to occupy the Embassy of Spain in Croatia, according to diplomatic sources informed <em>The Diplomat.</em></strong></h4> It is expected that, after the foreseeable acceptance by Croatia, he can join in the next few weeks, according to the aforementioned sources. José Ramón García Hernández, who was secretary of International Relations of the PP and spokesperson for the People's Group in the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Congress, was ambassador to Norway between September 2020 and July 2024. A doctor in Political Science and a graduate in Economic and Business Sciences, José Ramón García Hernández entered the Diplomatic Service in 2002 and was assigned to various positions in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs until in 2005 he became second in command at the Spanish Embassy in Bosnia. After that experience, he published the book “Letters from Sarajevo: reflections on politics and international relations”. In 2008 he was assigned to the Embassy in Bulgaria as “number two” and in 2012 he made the leap into politics when he was named executive secretary of International Relations of the People’s Party. In April 2014 he entered the Congress for the Madrid constituency, replacing Ignacio Astarloa, and in the elections of 2015 and 2016 he was re-elected MP for Ávila. In the Lower House, García Hernández was spokesman for the Foreign Affairs Committee, a position in which, beyond the differences with other spokesmen, he maintained a good personal relationship with them. When Mariano Rajoy resigned in 2018 and the 19th Congress of the People’s Party was convened, he stood as a candidate to preside over the PP, competing in the primary elections with María Dolores de Cospedal, Soraya Sáenz de Santamaría, Pablo Casado, José Manuel García-Margallo and Elio Cabanes. In those elections, García Hernández came in fifth place and was the first to give his support to Pablo Casado, with whom he shared ties with Ávila. However, in the elections of April 2019, he lost his seat for Ávila and was replaced as head of the Secretariat of International Relations of the PP by Valentina Martínez Ferro. In August of that year, as <em>The Diplomat</em> had previously reported, José Ramón García Hernández opted to return to the Diplomatic Career. The sources highlighted that García Hernández is “another prominent diplomat from the PP era who is serving as ambassador”, along with former minister Alfonso Dastis and former MP Jorge Moragas.
