Eduardo González
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has filled fourteen Consulates General, four of them with an “asterisk”: specifically those in Mexico City, Caracas, Havana (as previously reported by The Diplomat), and Miami.
According to the Official State Gazette (BOE) published on April 16, the Undersecretary of Foreign Affairs, European Union, and Cooperation, Xavier Martí Martí, has officially appointed the Consuls General in Santiago, Chile, Javier García de Viedma Bernaldo de Quirós; Geneva, Luis Fernández-Cid; Miami, Belén Alfaro; Lisbon, Alonzo Dezcallar; San Francisco (USA), Carlos Medina Drescher; Mexico City, Marcos Rodríguez; Caracas, Ramón Molina Lladó; Havana, José Miguel Corvinos; Manchester, Alejandro Polanco; Andorra la Vella, Juan Francisco Montalbán; Montevideo, Juan Carlos Gafo; Cape Town (South Africa), Ramón María Moreno; Porto Alegre (Brazil), Tomás Miquel Riba; and Guadalajara (Mexico), Jesús Silva.
The appointments of Marcos Rodríguez Cantero to the Consulate General in Mexico (from Caracas); Ramón Molina Lladó to the Consulate General in Caracas (from his position as ambassador to Gabon); and José Miguel Corvinos to the Consulate General in Havana (from his position as ambassador on the Special Mission for Digital Transformation and Hybrid Threats) were announced in mid-March by diplomatic sources to The Diplomat.
In total, the resolution published in the Official State Gazette (BOE) announces 99 appointments, including the fourteen consuls general. Among the remaining appointments, the appointments of Rodrigo Reyero Pita as consul in Havana and Miguel Oliveros Torres as consul in London stand out, as well as five deputy consuls: Eloísa Carmen Moreiro González, in Paris; Ainara Gómez López, in Brussels; Natividad Isabel Peña Bonilla, in Buenos Aires; Mónica Dezcallar Ruspoli, in Lima; and Aurora Rocío Carbonel de Barnola, in Caracas.
The “asterisk” marks the posts the government considers most sensitive and in which the Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares, does not need the opinion of the Diplomatic Career Board to decide on the names of those who will fill them. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs currently has a list of 34 posts with an “asterisk.”
On February 7, the Diplomatic Career Board (an advisory body made up of diplomats) approved the call for applications for the vacant posts abroad, known as the “bombo” in diplomatic jargon.
Specifically, the call for applications included, among the posts marked with an asterisk, the second-in-command position at the Embassy in Washington, Rabat, and Caracas, and the Spanish Consulates General in Miami, Caracas, and Havana. It also included the second-in-command position in Managua, which had the “asterisk” removed, and assigned instead to the second-in-command position in Algiers and the Spanish Consulate General in Mexico.
