The Secretary of State for Global Spain is a senior minister of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, European Union and Cooperation of the Kingdom of Spain. As a senior minister, it is a political appointment made by the Foreign Minister. The Secretary of State for Global Spain is mainly responsible for improving the foreign image of Spain as well as the coordination of the different bodies of the public administrations entrusted with the same task. Since 2020, the position has become more economical, assuming powers over economic diplomacy and communications. In this sense, the SEEG is in charge of planning and promoting of the foreign action with the objective of promoting Spain worldwide and developing tools to monitor and improve its foreign image. The most known policy that this Secretariat of State develops is Marca España, a policy started in 2012 and that today, with some modifications, still is active.
History
The origin of the Secretariat of State for Global Spain dates back to 2012, when the government of Mariano Rajoy, created the position of High Commissioner of the Government for Brand Spain, a position entrusted with the objective of coordinating the multiple private and public bodies that had an foreign action in order to give coherence to the image of Spain outside. This position had its own office known as Office of the High Commissioner. The High Commissioner was created during the economic crisis and it had no any budget. With the change of government in 2018, the new government decided to give this department its own budget to make it more efficient and change its name to the current one. As the High Commissioner, this new body was granted with the level of Secretariat of State. In 2020, the Secretariat of State was restructured to extend its competencies. It was transferred to this department the Diplomatic Information Office and the Directorate-General for International Economic Relations.
Structure
The Secretariat of State is composed of three departments, all of them run by a Director-General:
The Directorate-General for Strategy, Forecast and Coherence.
: It is a department created in 2020 responsible for carrying out studies and analysis of the current situation and to establish a coherent strategy for the Spanish foreign policy, as well to ensuring that the strategy is fullfilled. It is also responsible for preserve the foreign image of Spain.
: It is a department of the Secretariat of Stare responsible for the proposal and execution of the foreign policy of Spain in the field of international economic relations of a bilateral and multilateral nature, the institutional representation of Spain before the integration systems and other organizations, including the OECD, the proposal and execution of the foreign policy of Spain in the field of international relations in the field of air, maritime, terrestrial cooperation, and space, oceanic and polar matters and the negotiation and internal processing of international, bilateral and multilateral agreements related to the areas of their responsibility.
: Traditionally known as the Diplomatic Information Office, it is the department responsible for gathering and disseminating information to the Ministry and the media, as well to carrying out advertising campaigns and to control the Ministry's media.
