The Diplomat
The diplomat José María Fernández López de Turiso is the new deputy director general for the Maghreb at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, diplomatic sources told The Diplomat.
Fernández López de Turiso will fill the vacancy left by Javier Puig, who was appointed Spain’s new ambassador to Tunisia on the 11th, after having been in charge of northern affairs for the last five years in the Directorate General for the Maghreb, the Mediterranean and the Middle East, headed by Alberto Ucelay.
The new deputy director general for the Maghreb is a diplomat with a career spanning more than thirty years, having joined the EU in 1991, and for just over a year he has held the post of deputy director general for the Middle East.
Between 2013 and 2017, Fernández López de Turiso was ambassador to Trinidad and Tobago, until he became second head at the Spanish Embassy in London. In that post he had to act as Chargé d’Affaires from February until August 2021, after the then ambassador to the United Kingdom, Carlos Bastarreche, stepped down and the government took seven months to appoint a replacement.
Previously, he was Director General of Planning and Evaluation of Development Policies and Head of the Department of Cooperation with the Mediterranean and the Arab World, and was posted to the Spanish Embassies in Namibia, Tunisia, Nicaragua, Cuba and Italy.
