Agustín Santos Maraver, the diplomat who will no longer be Spain’s ambassador to the United Nations in the coming days to become number two for Madrid de Sumar, opted this Monday for media silence in the delicate interregnum, that of his position as a senior government official and his new role as a candidate for election. From the high halls of international diplomacy…
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Agustín Santos Maraver, the diplomat who will no longer be Spain’s ambassador to the United Nations in the coming days to become number two for Madrid de Sumar, opted this Monday for media silence in the delicate interregnum, that of his position as a senior government official and his new role as a candidate for election. From the high halls of international diplomacy to the mud of campaign politics, with no continuity solution: Santos Maraver (Los Angeles, 67 years old) is the left’s most notorious newcomer – and almost on the election call – announced days after the deal to close Sumar. Santos knows the halls of international diplomacy, but above all the small print of international treaties and the red hot topics on the global agenda down to the last detail: water, social economy, migration, climate change, development cooperation. His multilateralist profile and his knowledge of Spanish politics and society since his anti-Franco militancy make him an all-rounder with an asset, his distinctive external profile.
“We work in foreign policy, we’ve been friends for years,” explains Sumar spokesman Ernest Urtasun, who is also a diplomat. The idea of adding him to the lists came from Yolanda Díaz, and Urtasun is celebrating his inclusion for all that the diplomat, longtime activist in the United Left and now an independent, can contribute to the political project. “His experience as an ambassador to multilateral organizations, first in Geneva and then in New York, is very important for us,” he explains over the phone. Someone who, during his time in Switzerland, knew very well the “branch organizations” of the UN, such as the International Labor Organization (ILO) and the World Health Organization (WHO), as well as the other international organizations based in Geneva. Also the UN Human Rights Council, which Spain joined as ambassador.
Adding to his diplomatic side, Sumar’s spokesman has knowledge of Santos’ parliamentary politics: “The fact that he knows Congress is very important, he was a parliamentary adviser.” [el exministro de Exteriores socialista Miguel Ángel] Moratinos and then his cabinet director” between July 2008 and January 2011. It was a key moment for the normalization of relations with Cuba, stresses the Vice President of Los Verdes in the European Parliament, a process in which Santos Maraver played a leading role. “Spain was the first EU country to break Aznar’s common position on the island, which called for regime change to restore ties, and this rapprochement was pushed personally by Santos.” It’s one of his great achievements because Spain is turning the tide made clear that EU policy towards Cuba later gave.” In 2017, Brussels put an end to the doctrine dictated by Aznar in 1996.
During his time in New York, where he arrived in early 2018, Sumar’s number two has backed resolutions “like the social economy.” [presentada por Díaz y aprobada por la Asamblea General en abril], another on the care economy and a third on the subject of migration”. In his discussions with journalists at his residence in the Big Apple, the diplomat always distinguished himself for his extensive knowledge of treaties, conventions and initiatives, even the fine print of the ongoing debates in the world.
Santos studied philosophy and literature as well as political science and sociology at the Complutense University of Madrid and was a representative of his faculty in the student movement against Francoism. In 1982 he began his diplomatic career. He was stationed in the embassies of Beijing, Havana, Washington – where he closely followed the Central American peace negotiations – Canberra and in the Spanish mission to the European Union. He also served as Consul-General in Cape Town (South Africa) and Perpignan (France), a position to which he was demoted by the PP government but in which he played an important role in restoring the history of republican exile in the south of France . “He coordinated with the French authorities a program to restore historical memory, which was due to his initiative,” Urtasun recalls of the little-known period around 1939, when the beach at Argelès-sur-Mer became a concentration camp for Spanish Republican prisoners became .
Given the relative surprise that it meant for some to discover a notoriously left-wing diplomat, Urtasun confines himself to pointing out: “Yes, there are some progressives close to our sphere, just as there are those associated with the PP affiliated with or close to.” or with socialist sympathies.” There are no names except now his, at one’s discretion, in a race where this trait is prevalent to preserve extremes. While awaiting the first words in the political newcomer’s campaign, the formation for which he is likely to be elected deputy celebrates the landing of what the coalition defines as an “ecosocialist and ecofeminist” profile, well placed in the global context.
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