The Diplomat
The new ambassador of Venezuela in Spain, Gladys Gutiérrez Alvarado, has presented the Copies of her Letters of Credence at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Gutiérrez Alvarado, who occupies the vacancy left at the end of February by Coromoto Godoy, after being appointed Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs for Europe, went last Friday to the Spanish Ministry, where she was received by the introducer of ambassadors, María Sebastián de Erice.
Gladys Gutiérrez Alvarado, a person in whom the Venezuelan president, Nicolás Maduro, has full confidence, was already ambassador in our country between 2002 and 2005, after having served for some time as consul general of Venezuela in Madrid.
After that first stay in Spain, Hugo Chávez, of whom she had been one of the defenders in the trial to which he was subjected after the frustrated coup d’état of 1992, appointed her, in 2006, attorney general of the Bolivarian Republic. At the end of 2010 she became a member of the Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice.
In 2013, after the death of Chávez, Maduro appointed her president of the Supreme Court, a position she held until 2017. In 2020 and 2021 she was principal rector of the National Electoral Council and in 2022 she was again appointed president of the Supreme Court, a position in which which has been there until last January.
Although she will still have to wait some time until she can deliver her Letters of Credence to the King, the presentation of the Copies allows Gutiérrez Alvarado, ambassador, to begin her work at the head of the Embassy, where her predecessor spent less than a year as ambassador, after having Served as Chargé d’Affaires since December 2022.
The arrival of Coromoto Godoy to the Spanish capital -and at the same time the elevation of Spain’s charge d’affaires in Venezuela, Ramón Santos, to the rank of ambassador- marked the thaw in relations between Madrid and Caracas, after a period of bilateral tensions. This tension became visible with the departure in November 2020 of the Spanish ambassador to Venezuela, Jesús Silva, to show disagreement with some actions of the Bolivarian regime.
