The Diplomat
The Council of Ministers yesterday appointed Julio Pastor Bayón as the new Director General of Communication, Public Diplomacy and Networks of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and Hilda Jiménez Núñez as Director General of the Foreign Service. He also appointed new ambassadors to Afghanistan, Kazakhstan, Slovakia, Estonia, Ghana, Dominican Republic, Haiti and Paraguay.
Julio Pastor Bayón will be in charge of communications at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, replacing Mónica Prado, after having worked for almost two decades in the world of corporate communications.
Until last May, he was Director of Communication at CaixaBank and before that at FCC. He was also Director of Information Relations at Unión Fenosa.
As a journalist, he has worked in all media: radio, press, television and Internet. Among the most outstanding posts he has held are those of Content Director of Invertia, the then financial portal of Terra, stock market correspondent in New York for Tele 5 and executive editor of América Economía, the magazine of the Dow Jones group.
In his international career, Pastor has lived in Santiago de Chile, New York and Paris, where he graduated in French Language and Civilisation from the Sorbonne. In 2002 he was awarded the Schroders Prize for Economic and Financial Journalism.
Hilda Jiménez Núñez will take over the Directorate General of the Foreign Service, a post that has been held by Álvaro Kirkpatrick.
She belongs to the Cuerpo Superior de Administradores Civiles del Estado and, from 2018 to July 2021, she was deputy secretary general of the Presidency of the Government.
Previously, she held various positions in the General State Administration, in the Ministry of Finance and Public Administrations, where she was head of area in the Directorate General for Rationalisation and Centralised Procurement, deputy assistant director general for Music and Dance at INAEM and advisory member of the Support Unit of the General Technical Secretariat of the Ministry of Justice. She was Director of the Cabinet of the Secretary of State for Universities, Research, Development and Innovation of the Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities and advisor to Red.es.
She holds a degree in Private Real Estate Law from the School of Legal Practice of the Complutense University of Madrid and has completed the Public Leadership Course at the IESE Business School of the University of Navarra and the National Defence Course CESEDEN (Centro Superior de Estudios de la Defensa) of the Ministry of Defence.
In addition, the Executive appointed eight new Spanish ambassadors, all of whom were reported by The Diplomat.
The ambassador to the Dominican Republic will be Antonio Pérez-Hernández, who until the end of November last year was director of Casa América, and who previously served as ambassador to Iran, Nicaragua and Venezuela.
In Haiti, the ambassador will be Sergio Cuesta, who, since August 2018, was head of the Coordination Unit of the European Union Department in the Cabinet of the President of the Government.
Carmen Castiella, until now Director of Cooperation with Latin America and the Caribbean, will go to Paraguay.
In Europe, Lorea Arribalzaga, who in recent years was deputy director general for Andean countries, has been appointed ambassador to Slovakia, and Guillermo Corral, whose last post was that of chief of staff to the secretary of state for Global Spain, has been appointed ambassador to Estonia.
On the Asian continent, Ricardo Losa, currently deputy director general for the Pacific, Southeast Asia and the Philippines, will be the ambassador to Afghanistan; and Jorge Urbiola, deputy director general for Eastern Europe and Central Asia, will take charge of the Embassy in Kazakhstan.
Finally, in Africa, José Javier Gutiérrez has been appointed ambassador to Ghana. Until now, he was Deputy Director General for International Organisations.
