Viana Palace – the representative headquarters of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, European Union and Cooperation - today hosted the first working meeting of the State Secretariat for Global Spain with regional foreign affairs councillors to exchange ideas, share experiences and explore opportunities to collaborate in the future to connect better and more often with Spanish citizens abroad.
The State Secretary for Global Spain, Manuel Muñiz, chaired the meeting which included representatives, either in person or virtually, of all the regional governments, along with representatives from the Ministry of Inclusion, Social Security and Migration, and Ministry of Territorial Policy and Public Function.
This initiative is framed within the work being undertaken through the Global Spanish Citizen initiative (Spanish acronym: CEG) of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which seeks to improve relations between our country and its citizens residing overseas. The regional authorities have been working hard for many years with their respective communities abroad, and hence today’s meeting served to share experiences and programmes under way, and to identify joint lines of work with a view to the future.
An initiative to connect and structure the regions
“Our citizens abroad are calling for us to help them more, and as public authorities work by their side to support them”, stated Manuel Muñiz at the start of the meeting.
The State secretary explained that the Global Spanish Citizen initiative “seeks to better connect and structure the communities of Spaniards abroad, which includes the regional authorities, since regional identities are key for our Spaniards who live abroad”.
The Ambassador on Special Mission for Global Spanish Citizenship, Ángel Alonso Arroba, presented the main lines of work since the start of this initiative, stressing the need to join forces with the regional authorities to better identify Spanish talent abroad, offer content and goals to this relationship, connect professional networks better with each other, satisfy the demands and needs proposed by the different groups and underline the impressive work that so many Spaniards that live abroad carry out in their daily actions.
The ambassador reported that the CEG initiative has introduced a network of focal points for citizens at our country’s embassies abroad, and is developing a series of cross-cutting meetings and activities to connect different professional groups abroad. The meeting included the participation of representatives of the Network of Associations of Spanish Researchers and Scientists Abroad (Spanish acronym: RAICEX), the International Public Servants Unit of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Spain Connection initiative, set up by the Chamber of Commerce of Spain and the Renowned Brands Forum, to connect private sector professionals abroad.
In 2020, close to 36,200 people decided to settle in other countries, a 1.4% increase on the previous year, thus amounting to a total of close to 2.7 million Spaniards who live abroad. The largest communities are in Argentina (500,000), France (300,000) and the United States (175,000), as shown in the figures of the Census of Spanish Residents Abroad (Spanish acronym: PERE), published by the National Statistics Institute.