More than 175 Spaniards fly to Madrid from Abu Dhabi, but there is no confirmation that the King Emeritus is among them

Eduardo González More than 175 Spanish citizens have managed to leave Abu Dhabi by air bound for Madrid, but the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has no confirmation that King Emeritus Juan Carlos de Borbón is on board. "Regarding the King Emeritus, I haven't verified the list of citizens currently traveling, because I've received confirmation from my team that the plane has taken off and the number of passengers, but I haven't checked," declared Foreign Minister José Manuel Albares at the press conference following the Council of Ministers meeting. "But I assume that if he were on that flight, I would know," he added. In any case, he stated, "as for a possible repatriation, everything concerning the King Emeritus is up to him and the Royal Household to provide information and opinions on the matter." At the press conference, the minister insisted that the safety of the more than 30,000 Spaniards currently in the region is the Ministry's "absolute priority," as is "the safety of embassy staff and their families," to whom he reiterated his "gratitude and appreciation for the extraordinary work they are doing, some of them under very difficult circumstances, especially the embassy in Tehran." "They are all well, and at the time of this writing, there have been no deaths or injuries in our community," he assured. First evacuations "The Consular Emergency Division of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs remains operational 24 hours a day, seven days a week, with additional diplomatic staff in the crisis room, and we have set up supplementary telephone lines to reinforce consular services," he continued. “To date, the Foreign Ministry's crisis room alone has received almost 2,000 calls since Saturday, and we're talking about thousands upon thousands of calls if we add those being received by embassies,” he specified. “I also want to announce that evacuation operations for Spaniards in various countries of the region are already underway,” he continued. “For obvious security reasons, I will not go into any details until they are successfully completed,” he cautioned. “The resources employed, the level of difficulty, and the duration of each operation vary considerably from country to country, but we are already using all available means, both land and air, that each country's circumstances allow, to repatriate as many Spaniards as possible as soon as possible,” he explained. “I can inform you that just over 175 Spaniards are already flying to Madrid from Abu Dhabi on a commercial Etihad flight scheduled to arrive in Madrid around 7:00 p.m.,” he announced. “We also anticipate that other flights will depart from the Emirates via Istanbul throughout the day,” he added. Furthermore, “other evacuation operations are currently being prepared, and we will provide updates as they are successfully completed,” Albares assured. According to the minister, the Foreign Ministry will “immediately” reinforce the material and human resources of its embassies in the region in response to “the regional crisis affecting the Middle East,” “in addition to positioning other resources to prepare for possible evacuations as soon as opportunities arise.” “In that regard, we will almost immediately reinforce the embassies in the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, and Oman, and we will have a diplomatic deployment in Bahrain, which we will initially base in Riyadh,” he specified.

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