Eduardo González
The new US ambassador to Spain, Cuban-American businessman Benjamín León Jr., has yet to take office, nine months after being appointed by President Donald Trump.
According to the American newspaper “The Local,” which specializes in news about Spain, the new ambassador is still awaiting confirmation of his appointment by the Senate, which could take an indeterminate amount of time.
To do so, León must undergo an examination before the Foreign Relations Committee, which must validate his appointment. Once validated, it will be sent to the Senate, which must approve it again. These votes are still pending, and there is no scheduled date yet for them to take place.
According to sources cited by the newspaper, the main reason for this delay is that Trump simultaneously appointed hundreds of public officials pending Senate approval. Therefore, neither the US nor Spanish authorities know exactly when León will arrive in Madrid. The Senate’s ratification of León’s appointment (born in 1944 in Oriente, Cuba, and who emigrated to Miami in 1961) is considered certain, given the Republican majority in the Senate.
Meanwhile, the U.S. Embassy in Spain continues to be headed by Chargé d’Affaires Rian Harker Harris. The officials cited by the newspaper have made it clear that this delay is not due to the state of diplomatic relations between the two countries, despite the fact that Spain is not a priority for Trump and did not include Pedro Sánchez’s government in either the first or second rounds of international contacts when he came to power.
Benjamín León Jr. is expected to succeed Julissa Reynoso, ambassador since January 2022, who left the post in July 2024 to rejoin the law firm Winston & Strawn and join the Democratic campaign in the U.S. presidential elections. Therefore, Spain has not had a U.S. ambassador for a year and three months. Reynoso herself was ratified by the Senate in December 2021, eleven months after former US President Joe Biden won the election.
Benjamín León Jr., 80, a Republican Party donor, will take office at a time of difficult bilateral relations. Last week, Donald Trump proposed expelling Spain from NATO for its refusal to raise defense spending to 5%, a path not provided for in the Alliance Treaty itself, which establishes voluntary withdrawal as the only procedure for doing so. Pedro Sánchez’s government reacted by recalling that “Spain is a full and committed member of NATO” and calling for “maximum calm.”
This was not the first time Trump has attacked Pedro Sánchez’s government for its refusal to increase military spending during the NATO Summit in The Hague, held last June. On that occasion, the US president threatened to make Spain pay “double” in tariffs, but Sánchez himself, in his response, pointed out that trade negotiations between Spain and third countries are the responsibility of the EU as a whole, in its capacity as a single market, and therefore, the United States cannot impose differentiated tariffs on one of its member states.
