Eduardo González
The Council of Ministers appointed Sergio Román Carranza and Luis Ángel Redondo this Tuesday to head the Spanish Embassies in Egypt and Hungary, replacing Álvaro Iranzo and former Foreign Minister Alfonso Dastis, respectively.
Sergio Román Carranza Förster, a doctor in Law from the University of Barcelona, joined the Diplomatic Service in 2004. At the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, he has held positions in the International Legal Advisory Office and in the General Directorate for the Maghreb, the Mediterranean, and the Middle East. He was also a member advisor in the Department of International Affairs of the Office of the President of the Government.
Abroad, he has held deputy positions at the Spanish Embassies in Kenya and Libya. He served as political counselor and consul at the Spanish Embassy in Egypt, as well as cultural counselor and consul general in Santiago, Chile. In Brussels, he served in the European External Action Service and the Permanent Representation of Spain to the EU.
An Arabist and specialist in the Middle East and the Maghreb, he is the author of four books, two of them on Islamism in Egypt. Prior to joining the Diplomatic Service, he was a professor of International Law at the University of Barcelona. He has been decorated with the Officer’s Cross of the Order of Isabella the Catholic, as well as the Officer’s Cross of the Order of Civil Merit.
Carranza Förster replaces Álvaro Iranzo, who had been ambassador to Egypt since August 2022 and who last August turned seventy, the mandatory retirement age for civil servants. His last major role at the helm of the Cairo Embassy took place last week, on the occasion of the King and Queen’s State Visit to Egypt.
Luis Ángel Redondo is the new Spanish ambassador to Hungary. He holds a law degree from the University of Valladolid and has been a member of the Diplomatic Service since 1999. He has served as Deputy Chief of Staff at the Spanish Embassies in Addis Ababa (Ethiopia), Pretoria (South Africa), Maputo (Mozambique), and Wellington (New Zealand).
Abroad, he has also served as Deputy Consul at the Spanish Consulate General in Moscow and as Advisor on Human Rights Issues at the Permanent Representation of Spain to the United Nations in Geneva.
During his time in Madrid, he has held several positions in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs: Advisor and Counselor in the International Legal Department, Deputy Assistant Director General for United Nations and Global Affairs, Deputy Director of the Technical Office of the Undersecretary, and Director of the Technical Office of the Undersecretary.
He also served as president of the Diplomatic Service Competition Tribunal in the call for applications issued by the Undersecretary’s resolution of December 9, 2024, in which 15 women and 13 men were selected. Last July, the newspaper ‘The Objective’ reported that Redonde had been “pressured” by the team of the Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares, to include more women than men among those selected. Official sources from the Foreign Office assured the same newspaper that the minister “does not and has never been involved in the selection of candidates for the Diplomatic Service” and that this process corresponds to “an independent tribunal made up of people from different academic and professional fields, whom the minister has not selected either.”
Redondo will replace Alfonso Dastis, who was Minister of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation between 2016 and 2018, during Mariano Rajoy’s (PP) final term in government, and who will turn seventy on October 5.
Meanwhile, Félix Costales, ambassador to Nigeria, has been appointed non-resident ambassador to Benin, and Jaime Moreno Bau, ambassador to Kenya, has been appointed to the same position in Somalia.