This is my first blog. So I thought I should begin by explaining who I am and why I am blogging.
I have been working at the British Embassy in Madrid since the middle of last year. I am the Deputy Head of Mission.
Before coming to Madrid I spent 3 years working as the Deputy Head of Mission at the British Embassy in Bangkok, Thailand. Prior to that, my career in the Foreign Office focussed on European Union and communications issues, including periods working at our EU Representation in Brussels as well as a secondment to No 10 Downing Street when Tony Blair was Prime Minister.
Spain is a vitally important partner for the UK. The breadth and depth of our relationship is striking. We work together across the board, including in the EU, NATO and the United Nations. So it is not surprising that we have a big operation here. Over 200 people work on behalf of the British Government in Spain. The majority are based in our 9 Consulates spread all over the country. Nearly 14 million British citizens come to Spain every year for their holidays and we estimate that around 800,000 live here for all or part of the year. So an important part of our work is providing consular advice and support to British citizens visiting or resident in Spain.
We also work hard to help British business succeed in Spain. Spain is the UK’s 8th largest export market. We export more to Spain than to India and Brazil combined. In the other direction, Spanish companies do lots of business in the UK. Over 400 companies are registered there. Santander has 1,300 branches. Ferrovial owns a number of our airports, including Heathrow.
We work closely with the British Council and the wider British education sector to help foster links between our students. There are 90,000 Spanish students in British universities and 90 accredited British schools in Spain.
Read more about UK´s relationship with Spain.
Alongside these important trade and people-to-people links we collaborate successfully with Spain on a wide range of current issues. For example, Spain signed up to the declaration on preventing sexual violence in conflict launched by the UK at the United Nations’ General Assembly last month.
So why am I blogging? I hope I can use this blog to have conversations with you about the work we are doing here in Spain and how we collaborate with our Spanish partners.
I still consider myself a relative newcomer to this country and am keen to learn more about it. I hope the conversations I will have on this blog will help me with that too.
So if you have been kind enough to read this far please do let me know what you think of this blog and what issues you would find interesting for me to write about in future.
And I’ll then do my best to be a regular and interesting blogger.