Luis Ayllón
The diplomat Carles Casajuana, who was director of the International and Security Department of the Prime Minister’s Office under José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, will be Spain’s new ambassador to Greece, once the Spanish government has been granted the go-ahead by the Greek authorities, according to The Diplomat, according to reliable sources.
When his appointment is confirmed, Casajuana, 67, from Barcelona, will replace Enrique Viguera, who has held the post since 2017.
After his time at the Moncloa, between 2004 and 2008, Carles Casajuana was appointed ambassador to London, where he remained until 2012. Previously, he had been ambassador to Malaysia and permanent representative ambassador to the Political and Security Committee of the Council of the European Union (COPS), as well as having been posted to Bolivia and the Philippines and to Spain’s permanent representation to the UN in New York.
A few months after finishing his stay in the United Kingdom, he requested a leave of absence from his diplomatic career to carry out various activities in the private sphere, as an external advisor to a number of companies. He was also a member of the board of trustees of Alianza por la Solidaridad and of the European NGO network “Solidar”.
In recent years, he has combined his work as a lecturer in International Relations at the Ramón Llull University in Barcelona with his activity as a writer and columnist for various newspapers, including La Vanguardia. He is currently a member of the Advisory Board of the Godó Group in Madrid.
Casajuana, who writes mainly in Catalan, is the author of ten novels, including ‘El último hombre que hablaba catalán’ (The Last Man Who Spoke Catalan), which won the Ramon Llull Novel Prize in 2009, and the more recent ‘Últimas noticias del Chaco’ (Last News from Chaco), set in this South American region.
Now, Casajuana, a graduate in Law and Economics, and a diplomat since 1980, will return to the diplomatic career, taking charge of one of the embassies that has been among the most sought-after in the last year. In fact, when the Ministry of Foreign Affairs advertised the post in autumn 2020, up to 40 diplomats applied for the post.
On the other hand, everything points to Celsa Nuño, who was under-secretary of Foreign Affairs for just over a year with Arancha González Laya in the Palace of Santa Cruz, being the new Spanish ambassador to Switzerland, according to the same sources.
The post of ambassador in Berne has been vacant since the incumbent, Victorio Redondo, was appointed ambassador to France on 29 September.
Celsa Nuño has been ambassador to Jamaica and has headed the Spanish consulates in Rio de Janeiro, Caracas and Rabat.
