Eduardo González
The Council of Ministers appointed José Pascual Marco as special ambassador for the Great Lakes and Horn of Africa and Francisco Javier Puig as ambassador on special mission to Afghanistan on Tuesday, December 2.
A graduate in Law and Philosophy from the Complutense University of Madrid and a member of the Diplomatic Corps since 1983, José Pascual Marco has dedicated a significant part of his long diplomatic career to the European Union, both in Madrid and Brussels.
Marco served as Consul General in Melbourne, Deputy Director General of the Planning and Evaluation Office, responsible for Spanish non-governmental cooperation between 1990 and 1993, Head of the Spanish Trade Office in Turkey (1993-96), Deputy Head of Mission at the Spanish Embassy in South Africa (1996-99), and Counselor at the Permanent Representation of Spain to the European Union (1999-2001).
In 2003, he was appointed Spain’s ambassador to the Democratic Republic of Congo. From 2006 to 2010, he served as Deputy Head of Mission at the Spanish Embassy in Washington, D.C. From 2010 to 2015, he was Spain’s Deputy Permanent Representative to the European Union, and between 2015 and 2017, he was Director General of Cultural Policy and Industries and the Book at the Ministry of Education, Culture and Sport. In 2017, he was appointed Director General of Coordination of Common Policies and General Affairs of the European Union at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and from August 2021 until now, he has been Spain’s ambassador to the United Kingdom, where he will be replaced by Emma Aparici.
For his part, Francisco Javier Puig, a member of the Diplomatic Corps since June 2002, has served as Spain’s ambassador to Tunisia from November 2022 until now, where he will be replaced by Isidro González Afonso. Previously, from 2017 until his appointment in Tunisia, he served as Deputy Director General for the Maghreb at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
He has also been posted to the Spanish embassies in Tunisia as Counselor (2003-2006), in Morocco as Embassy Secretary (2006-2010), and in Guatemala (2010-2012) and Vietnam (2014-2017) as Deputy Head of Mission. At the Ministry of Foreign Affairs headquarters, he was Deputy Director General for the Maghreb between 2012 and 2014.