Speech by President of the Government during meeting with Spanish community in Dominican Republic

Spanish Embassy, Santo Domingo (Dominican Republic)

Thank you very much, Mr Ambassador. Good evening to you all. First of all, I wish to thank all of you who are sharing this evening with us. Secondly, on behalf of the entire Spanish delegation I wish to express my gratitude for all the attention and professionalism, which is a hallmark, Mr Ambassador, of the diplomatic corps whenever we are away travelling. So, my thanks to all of you who have made this very intense, albeit short, trip possible, but one which I feel has been very fruitful in terms of re-launching relations, which are so necessary, between the Dominican Republic and Spain. And thirdly, I wish to thank each of you.

In these seven or eight months since I have been President of the Government, I will have travelled to nine Latin American countries, I seem to recall, and on many occasions we have made a technical stopover in the Dominican Republic, and whenever we have made this stopover, the ambassador is there waiting for us at the airport for a chat, to talk, even though it may only be for half an hour, to tell us how things are here in the Dominican Republic; but on this occasion I logically had to be with… Isn't this the diplomatic service? ...to be with you to pass on our gratitude and say to you that you, in reality, are the finest ambassadors of our country and to say to you that we take diplomatic relations and relations with the governments of Latin American countries very seriously.

You are living, we are living, that is, global politics in general, a complex, difficult situation in which we also have to convey to and enlighten the public opinion of our countries about what we feel are the paths we should take and how to tackle the challenges we face on many occasions, these global and shared challenges. Here, for example, talking with the President of the Dominican Republic, talking about climate change, about how climate change is affecting many of the island States in the Caribbean, and clearly also migration. You have Haiti and some of the challenges we are facing, such as triangular cooperation in order to also be able to help this country through EU funding and Spanish funding, obviously with the cooperation of the Dominican Republic.

In short, what I want to say to you with this is that we are a government committed to relations with Latin America, we believe that Spain must recover - I wouldn't say its presence, because we have always been here - but perhaps, a louder voice, with our finger more firmly on the pulse, and be more present even though we are now in a digital era, with social media and the suchlike, a physical presence I believe says a great deal and contributes to facilitating the work of many of you who are representing large Spanish corporations here in the Dominican Republic, so, although this demands an effort, we obviously do this with great pleasure and commitment to the benefit of our country.

This is what happens to politicians when we sit down to talk; we don't know how to finish. I simply want to end by making a promise - as is only right - but I want you to know that the government is working, as are the parliamentary groups in the Lower House, to repeal the infamous voto rogado so that, in short, in such important election processes as will be held in May this year - three elections in one day - municipal elections, regional elections and European elections; I won't say when the general elections will be because if not, that would take the headline here, Mr Ambassador, which isn't the idea, but three very important elections will be held and it is important for your voice to be heard and felt in electoral processes. Hence, I hope that we can arrive at this electoral process with the amendment agreed between the different parliamentary groups on this voto rogado. That is the commitment the Government of Spain makes; I believe that this is the commitment from the majority of the parliamentary groups in the Lower House and I hope we can push it through.

And meanwhile, good night, thank you for having accompanied my delegation and me this evening and I will now come round and talk to you in person, which is undoubtedly the most interesting aspect.

Thank you.

(Transcript edited by the State Secretariat for Communication).

Non official translation