After six months loaded with intrigues, the Argentine government will have a new ambassador to Spain. The businessman and former CEO of Credit Suisse Spain, Wenceslao Bunge Saravia, must renounce his Spanish citizenship to hold the position that was vacant after the dismissal of Roberto Bosch and the failed appointment of another diplomat for this position, Alejandro Alonso Sainz.
Wenceslao Bunge Saravia was chosen by the Argentine president ultra -rightist, Javier Milei, and his chancellor, Gerardo Werthein, and his designation was confirmed by the Senate this Wednesday, with 53 votes in favor and only two against.
The level of amateurism that was in the Argentine Foreign Ministry has attracted attention, since Bunge Saravia has to overcome the first stumbling Royal decree 170/2023, on March 7, two years ago.
Last December, the Foreign Ministry headed by Werthein starred in another embarrassment after applying at the head of the Embassy in Madrid to diplomat Alonso Sainz, who days later separated without giving major explanations of what happened. The appearance of an alternative candidate more related to the Ultra Executive appeared as a possible reason. “The corresponding filters did not pass,” diplomatic sources said at that time.
The Foreign Minister had expelled the diplomat Roberto Bosch, who was in the sight of Milei a month since he entered into conflict with the Sánchez government. Among the causes of his departure is not to have a fluid relationship with the anarchocapitalist guru Jesús Huerta de Soto, whom the Argentine president professes enormous admiration and is paid with awards, such as the Juan de Mariana award.
Bunge Saravia was CEO of the Credit Suisse Spain Bank, where he was almost thirty years old and where he went in the middle of the crisis of which he was finally saved, in 2023, when acquired by his rival UBS. The entrepreneur went to work at Global C-Chairman de Real Estate Investment Banking in Jll, in Madrid.
He is the son of Wenceslao Bunge, who was a lobbist and spokesman for Alfredo Yabrán, the businessman who took his life in the midst of a legal cause against him after being denounced as the intellectual author of the murder of the photojournalist José Luis Cabezas, occurred in 1997.
Tense relationships with Moncloa
In his diplomatic role, Bunge Saravia will have the arduous task of bringing positions between Argentina and Spain. Bilateral relations are still tense, but they do not reach the climbing level of almost a year ago, when Milei, visiting Madrid in an act of Vox, called Begoña Gómez, Sánchez’s wife “corrupt.
After the Argentine president refused to apologize for his words, the Spanish government retired his ambassador to Buenos Aires, María Jesús Alonso, and refused to receive Milei in his different trips to Spain. The ultra -right -wing president also considered doing the same, but kept Bosch in his position. Until December, when he signed a decree that detached him.
Bosch was Ricardo Alfonsín’s right when the radical leader was in charge of the embassy in Madrid (during the Peronist government of Alberto Fernández) and with Werthein’s arrival at the Foreign Ministry his days were told. It is said that the commercial aggregate, Alejandro Nimo, was behind the displacement of the diplomat. Fast to uncheck Bosch, Nimo defined himself in his social networks “anarchocapitalist, mileista and disciple of Jesús Huerta de Soto.”
At the end of 2024, the waters on either side of the Atlantic Ocean began to calm down. Milei lowered his tone to his diatribes against Sánchez and authorized an approach, which took place in December, when he received in the Casa Rosada the credential letters of the new ambassador of Spain in Buenos Aires, Joaquín María de Arístegui Laborde. After the scandal with the cryptophaf occurred in February, the Spanish socialist leader did not deprived himself, in the Plenary of Congress, to compare Alberto Núñez Feijóo with Milei: “Both are scammers,” he said.
Sanchez granted the PLACET to Bunge Saravia a month ago, according to the Senate Agreements Commission. It is in this context that Bunge Saravia said, before the senators, that its three objectives are “normalizing the bilateral relationship, working on bringing investments from Spanish companies and groups for Argentina, and promoting the increase in Argentina’s exports to Spain.”
MERCOSUR-EU Agreement
For Miguel Ponce, former Undersecretary of Industry and Commerce during the Government of Raúl Alfonsín (Radical Centroiz left), the Argentine embassy in Madrid must work for national interests in a complex global panorama. “The Huerta de Soto universe has nothing to do with the authentic and real interests, so circumstantial ideological adhesions should be subalternized. An embassy in Spain has to think about various scenarios that can occur depending on the scaling of the tariff war.”
Along these lines, the expert points out the importance of hierarchizing the representation of Argentina in Spain and, in its opinion, “deideologizing diplomatic ties” so as not to harm economic ties. “Within the framework of this commercial war and at a time when the European Union is looking to accelerate agreements with other countries to place what would have difficulty in July in the North American market, we are facing the possibility of the Mercosur-EU agreement, now demanded by Europe itself. In that sense, Spain has always sought to be the head of the Mercosur beach in Europe and vice versa, be the representatives of the EU before Argentina and the South American block.”
When “deducting” or not, the new ambassador gave a track. Bunge Saravia said he read a book by Daniel Scioli to interior to how the former Argentine ex -embassy in Brazil handled the crisis between the governments of Alberto Fernández and Jair Bolsonaro. “I am very aware of the challenge of this mission. They are different governments. I read a very interesting book, which helped me a lot, which was the one who wrote former ambassador Scioli. He also had a very complicated mission with governments with different characters and what he did well,” he said. Today Scioli is the Secretary of Tourism, Environment and Sports of the Government of Milei.
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