New Delhi: Spain has initiated the method to exchange its Ambassador to India, Juan Antonio March Pujol, within the wake of studies pointing to potential violation of protocol, misuse of public funds and improper monetary dealings. The transfer follows a report submitted by Spain’s Overseas Ministry to the nation’s Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Workplace in Might, as reported by the Spanish digital information outlet The Goal.
The studies in Spanish media don’t, nonetheless, set up that the allegations towards the ambassador have been confirmed.
In accordance with The Goal, the ambassador allegedly sought help from numerous Spanish firms based mostly in India in addition to the federal government of Rajasthan to advertise artists who weren’t Spanish. These sponsorships, it stated, have been sought with out informing the Spanish international ministry, and the concert events have been to be organised with out leaving any report within the accounts of the Embassy in India.
The artists, the report stated, have been commissioned to carry out at cultural concert events as a part of the Spain-India Twin 12 months that coincided with the ambassador’s birthday. These concert events have been finally vetoed by the Spanish Company for Worldwide Growth Cooperation (AECID). These commissioned to carry out included a neighborhood dance firm, STEM Dance Kampani, Spanish tenor Joan Laínez and Chinese language tenor Huiling Zhu.
It goes additional so as to add that Huiling, the Chinese language mezzo-soprano, “was rumored to have a romantic relationship with the ambassador”.
“This artist, who will not be Spanish, obtained €18,000 from the cultural finances of this embassy,” in response to the report. The ambassador justified in search of authorisation to be used of public funds to fee her concert events in 2025 by arguing that her “musical repertoire consisted largely of Spanish lyric songs”. However Huiling’s biography, in response to The Goal, doesn’t point out any Spanish music.
The ambassador can also be alleged to have reached a private settlement with BLS, an Indian firm chargeable for processing Spanish visa purposes, underneath which the corporate would contribute 5,000 euros towards a cultural occasion in Rajasthan.
BLS handles outsourced visa-processing companies for the Spanish Embassy in India, in addition to for different Spanish missions all over the world.
Alfredo Martínez Serrano, Spain’s ambassador to Canada, is predicted to take cost in New Delhi. As soon as India grants its approval, the formal handover on the Spanish Embassy in New Delhi is predicted to happen inside the subsequent few weeks.
March, in response to The Goal, noticed New Delhi as his final posting earlier than his retirement in February 2028 when he would flip 70.
The report additionally stated that after taking over his submit in New Delhi, March inaugurated the Indo-Spanish Movie and Cultural Discussion board at Marwah Movie Studios, led by Sandeep Marwah, president of the Worldwide Chamber of Media and Leisure Industries (ICMEI), in “partnership with the Spanish Embassy,” with March named its “patron”. The connection later prolonged to March’s daughter, Milena March Franzi. Final July, Marwah hosted her for a workshop on “model administration” on the Asian Academy of Movie and Tv, an occasion promoted by ICMEI and that includes pictures of her with the ambassador.
In accordance with The Goal, Milena holds a diplomatic passport issued by Spain’s international ministry, which has facilitated her skilled actions in India alongside her father.
“They’ve established an organization to introduce companies to India. Milena attends personal occasions in embassy automobiles and lives within the residence whereas doing enterprise for her father. “She’s his entrance,” a former ambassador instructed the publication, terming the newest developments an “unprecedented scandal” .
Spain’s Council of Ministers had accepted the appointment of Juan Antonio March Pujol as ambassador to India in early 2024. He assumed the function in September that 12 months, after having been on go away from the Spanish international ministry for greater than a decade. On the time, The Diplomat in Spain had described the delay as “an unusually lengthy interval” between two international locations that maintained no identified bilateral disagreement.
The Spanish authorities had sought India’s approval to nominate him as ambassador after the earlier ambassador, José María Ridao, requested in December 2023 that Overseas Minister José Manuel Albares enable him to go away the submit in New Delhi. Ridao was appointed Ambassador to India in July 2021.
March was thought of near former Spanish prime minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero and former international minister Miguel Ángel Moratinos. In accordance with The Diplomat in Spain, Moratinos had apparently taken up the difficulty of the delay within the approval for March’s appointment with Indian authorities.
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Barceló Dome controversy
Earlier than India, Juan Antonio March Pujol’s final diplomatic posting was as Spain’s ambassador to Russia, the place he served from 2007 till the top of 2011. March was additionally stationed in Geneva, the place he served as Spain’s Everlasting Consultant to the United Nations and Ambassador to the World Commerce Group (WTO) between 2004 and 2007.
It was throughout his time on the United Nations that he turned carefully related to certainly one of Spain’s most formidable cultural tasks.
With the help of then-foreign minister Moratinos, March offered to the United Nations a proposal to renovate Room XX of the Palace of Nations in Geneva. The room was subsequently renamed the “Human Rights Chamber”.
Below the unique proposal, Madrid would bear 30 p.c of the associated fee, whereas the rest would come from personal contributions. The Spanish authorities subsequently budgeted €16.6 million for the development of the Dome by Spanish painter Miquel Barceló. The ultimate value of the fee, nonetheless, exceeded €20 million.
The challenge turned controversial, together with over the allocation of €500,000 from the Growth Help Fund, or FAD.
The Spanish authorities sought to justify that expenditure by arguing that the work was meant to advertise human rights and multilateralism.
In 2017, Ramón Álvarez de Miranda, then president of Spain’s Courtroom of Accounts, raised questions in regards to the state’s contribution to the challenge earlier than the Congress of Deputies.
The Barceló Dome was ultimately inaugurated in 2008, virtually a 12 months later than initially scheduled. The ceremony was attended by King Juan Carlos and Queen Sofía, Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, United Nations Secretary Common Ban Ki-moon and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who was then prime minister. Zapatero’s authorities was on the time selling the Alliance of Civilisations alongside Erdogan.
March attended the inauguration as vp of the ONUART Basis, a place he held alongside his submit as Spain’s Ambassador to Russia.
(Edited by Amrtansh Arora)
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