Spain keen on expanding partnership with India: Ambassador

Spanish armada ship Cantabria, the second largest naval ship currently operated by the Spanish, behind the LHD Juan Carlos 1, is on its way back home after concluding a multinational exercise ÔTriton Centenary 2013Õin australia. On the eve of its visit to

(SPÕs): Can you give us a little background on SpainÕs relationship with India? Ambassador: Spain established a relationship with India after we joined the United Nations in 1953. A full-fledged embassy was not established until 1955, though there was a Chargé d'affaires in 1954. In the beginning it was very much a formal relation and Spain was under dictatorship at that time and Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru was not particularly fond of General Franco. So the relations were rather distant for a long time. Spain became a democracy in 1975 with elections being held in 1977. Very soon the relation grew in intensity and importance, but it was more a cultural and political relation not much economic, meaningful bilateral, commercial, investment relation.

There was a state visit of the King and Queen in 1981 to India. Last yearÕs visit here by His Majesty the King was an important visit which boosted the relationship between India and Spain.

This was relatively a small embassy and we have outgrown these premises. We have two-thirds of our offices in a bigger building in Connaught Place where we have commercial, military and cultural sections. I would describe relations as cordial relation between 1977 and the late 1990s and there was a leap forward in the beginning of this century. Then little by little we went from 10 Spanish companies to over 250 companies today. We have two commercial offices, one in Mumbai and the other in Delhi. It has grown fivefold and we are considering the urgent need to expand the office premises, make it twice as big and still not have enough space for all the people who are going to join us.

Since I came to India in May 2012, we have created 14 new positions in this embassy when Spain was undergoing very strict budgetary restrictions. In spite of that Spain is extremely arrogant about boosting its relations with India. I have been in politics for 12 years and I was Member of Parliament and was senior spokesperson of the party on foreign policy and affairs. So when the Prime Minister won the elections and the Minister of Foreign affairs announced my appointment as ambassador, it was a political message to the Indian Government that we mean business with India and that we have been ignoring this great nation for too long. We wanted to give boost in the number of people in the embassy and also to increase the presence of Spanish companies here. It is in many ways an ambassadorial position that has quite a political punch...we are taking advantage of this interlock.

I can tell you that today the relations between India and Spain are on a different pedastal. We have a very fluid contact with politicians of the country. We have met the Chief Ministers of Karnataka, Maharashtra, andhra Pradesh and we intend to meet the Chief Ministers of Tamil Nadu, Gujarat, Odisha, West bengal and Kerala and I am also going to Goa for the reception of the Spanish ship Cantabria. We will also be going to Jammu & Kashmir, rajasthan, Punjab, Madhya Pradesh and we intend to open a consulate in Chennai. right now, Spain is seriously investing in India. We have some of our most important companies present but not in the way and intensity that we would want.

We are a country with no hidden agenda, no strings attached. It is true that we are not a global military power but we have a respectable military which I think can and must be an essential part of bilateral relations between India and Spain. India is a very old nation and probably the oldest civilisation and that makes this country very special. IndiaÕs politi- cal culture is unique and vibrant and that makes the armed forces of India, probably amongst the most respectful and professional. Today, we have made a huge leap forward in the economic side but it is still far from its potential. India is an extraordinary partner and I think we need to deepen that partnership. SPÕs: What all Spain can offer to have a strong base of partnership in India for the global market? Ambassador: It is very complimentary. I see great opportunity in the emerging markets. When I see India, it is not just great opportunity but great opportunity for meaningful and solid partnership. India is known for intellectual property and like Spain it is devoted to high technology, engineering, avante-garde solutions, research and development, infrastructure, tourism and defence. as regards defence, we have sophisticated system of multidimensional electronic and radar multilinked systems. Our coastline is protected. We have the 13th largest coastline (7,800 km of coastline as peninsula), we have so many islands and we are a peninsula. This makes us a maritime nation, so is India between two oceans and also in a complicated neighbourhood. Spain is good at thwarting terror threats, organised crime, illegal trafficking, etc. Our systems are quite impressive and we are going to invite Indian officials to visit coastal defence systems...radar, motion detectors, infrared cameras, CCTV cameras and all combined gives us a picture of what is happening up to 15 kilometres into sea. It is extremely effective in search and rescue operations and the response is much faster.

In the early years of this century, we had peaked at 2,50,000 illegal penetrations on the sea borders, now it is down to dozens as the Spanish Navy picks them up much before the border. We are doing extremely well as far as coastal protection. These systems have been developed by Indra and amper. Indra is among the worldÕs giants in high-tech, three out of every five air traffic control is built by Indra and nearly 90 per cent used in India is by Indra. There are certain contracts with the defence sector which is catered by Indra and we are extremely satisfied with the level of expertise of the tree of excellence that Indra has developed. GMV, Technobeat, etc have state-of-the-art defence systems in very sensitive areas. SPÕs: What is the proportion of R&D investment in Spain? Ambassador: It is not that much. However, the r&D budget has doubled from 600 million euros in 2012 to nearly 1.4 billion euros in 2014. Some of the most cuttingedge technology is made by the private sector. Telefonica is one giant full-fledged technological company in the world and has huge r&D investment. We are only 49 million people and we take pride in our global companies such as Indra, Telefonica, Navantia, airbus Military consortium of which we are a proud part. None of the other participants in the consortium had any kind experience in building military transport aircraft and it was Casa, the Spanish branch of eaDS. This is how the a400M project was born which was an evolution of the capacities, the technologies and the design of many decades of brilliant work of Spanish aerospace engineers. That has given birth of the quality of C295 which is the doubtlessly best midsized military airplane in the world. This is used by the american Coast Guard. It has won dozens of tenders around the world. This is the plane we intend to replace avro transport plane. It is used as a platform for anti-submarine war, rescue, surveillance,