Eduardo González
The Council of Ministers appointed Lorea Arribalzaga and Sofía Ruiz del Árbol as Spanish ambassadors to the Dominican Republic and Slovakia, respectively, on Tuesday.
Lorea Arribalzaga joined the Diplomatic Service in 2001. In the central services of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, she served as Deputy Director General for Andean Countries in the Directorate General for Ibero-America and the Caribbean (2017-2021) and Deputy Director General for Development Policies (2011-2012). She has also held other positions in the Directorate General for Ibero-America and the Caribbean, the Directorate General for Development Policies, and the Deputy Directorate General for Eastern Europe.
She has served at the Spanish Embassies in Costa Rica, Ecuador, and Italy, and from September 2021 to the present, she was the Spanish Ambassador to Slovakia.
She replaces Antonio Pérez-Hernández, who was dismissed by the Council of Ministers on June 3, just five days shy of turning seventy, the retirement age for civil servants.
Arribalzaga will be replaced in Slovakia by Sofía Ruiz del Árbol, who served as Deputy Chief of Staff at the Spanish Embassy in Managua (2005-2008) and the Spanish Embassy in Santo Domingo (2011-2014). She served as Consul General of Spain in Guayaquil (Ecuador) from 2008 to 2011 and Deputy Consul of Spain in Jerusalem (2018-2021) and Miami (2021 to present). In Madrid, she served as Senior Officer at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs from 2015 to 2018.