<h6><strong>Eduardo González</strong></h6> <h4><strong>The Council of Ministers approved this Tuesday the appointment of José Ramón García Hernández, former Executive Secretary of International Relations for the People's Party (PP), to the Spanish Embassy in Croatia, replacing Juan González-Barba, whose dismissal has sparked a heated political and diplomatic controversy due to the alleged political motives for his dismissal.</strong></h4> With a PhD in Political Science and a degree in Economics and Business Administration, José Ramón García Hernández joined the diplomatic service in 2002 and held various positions in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs until 2005, when he became second-in-command at the Spanish Embassy in Bosnia. Following this 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 deputy, and in 2012, he entered politics when he was appointed Executive Secretary of International Relations for the People's Party. In April 2014, he entered the Congress of Deputies for the Madrid constituency, replacing Ignacio Astarloa, and was re-elected as a deputy for Ávila in the 2015 and 2016 elections. In the Lower House, García Hernández served as spokesperson for the Foreign Affairs Committee, a position in which, despite his differences with other spokespersons, he maintained a good personal relationship. When Mariano Rajoy resigned in 2018 and the 19th Congress of the People's Party (PP) was convened, he ran as a candidate for president of 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 finished fifth and was the first to endorse Pablo Casado, with whom he shared ties to Ávila. However, in the April 2019 elections, he lost his seat in Ávila and was replaced as head of the PP's International Relations Secretariat by Valentina Martínez Ferro. In August of that year, as previously reported by The Diplomat, José Ramón García Hernández opted to return to the diplomatic service, after which he served as ambassador to Norway from September 2020 to July 2024. García Hernández replaces Juan González-Barba, who was appointed ambassador to Croatia in March 2022, months after being dismissed as Secretary of State for the European Union due to his serious disagreements with the Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares. González-Barba's dismissal as ambassador to Zagreb was harshly criticized by the Association of Spanish Diplomats (ADE) and the People's Party (PP), who attributed Albares's decision to the Secretary of State's publication of an opinion piece praising King Felipe VI. The article followed the Ministry of Foreign Affairs' discontent with the Royal Household for not informing it of King Felipe VI's intention not to attend the reopening of Notre Dame Cathedral. Last February, Albares accused the PP of "politicizing the diplomatic career." ADE sources denounced the "arbitrary" dismissal of five ambassadors before completing their three-year term for political reasons. Specifically, the government had already requested, at that time, the approval of the ambassadors to succeed Juan González-Barba in Croatia; Alberto Antón in Belgium; and Guillermo Kirkpatrick de la Vega in South Korea.
