The unusual reception Queen Elizabeth gave Argentina’s Ambassador to the UK

The future came some time ago. And it has a quaint side. the Argentine Ambassador to the United Kingdom, Javier Figueroa, presented his credentials to Queen Isabel, with a unprecedented ceremony and at one point unusual, depending on the pandemic.

They took Figueroa in a float, according to the protocol, at Buckingham Palace. He walked to a room where the credentials are deposited which fully qualify him as head of the Argentine mission in London. But the queen spoke to him from a distant screen.

Isabel appeared live and live by a monitor with discrete dimensions resting on a piece of furniture. She spoke of Windsor Castle, where she has been kept under strict physical surveillance since the coronavirus outbreak. The monarch is 95 years old and was widowed just over a month after the death of Duke Felipe of Edinburgh.

Figueroa is a career ambassador and had to present his documents to the Queen last year. But the ceremony was postponed due to health restrictions in a country that has closed completely, albeit for a few months, very strictly as the government has launched a mass vaccination plan for its people, which has improved their situation. Now he has entered a gradual normalization of everyday life.

The Queen’s Marshal, Alistair Harrison, Head of the Diplomatic Corps, went to find Figueroa, his wife and daughter at the Argentine residence in London. And they were taken by tank to Buckingham, in a transfer which the diplomat himself was responsible for further editing on video and uploaded to his social media. with music from U2.

The place The Royal family released the first photos and reported that on Wednesday “the Queen had two audiences via video from Windsor Castle” and with two flags, one from Argentina and one from Canada, reported that it was Ambassador Javier Figueroa and Canadian High Commissioner Ralph Goodale.

This week, Vladimir Putin received the credentials of a dozen ambassadors, including Argentina’s Eduardo Zuaín. To deal with COVID 19, the Russian president was about 30 meters from diplomats.

Changes in the relationship

“It was a very formal interview and I pointed out (to the Queen) that I have instructions to work on all aspects of the complex bilateral relationship that the UK and our country have.”he told state news agency Telam.

The queen was on the other side of the screen. And the sentence becomes important if we take into account that when Alberto Fernández took office he put the Falklands conflict before the relationship with the UK, and from the Foreign Office he asked other ministers . cold treatment from Ambassador Mark Kent, now outgoing.

However, over time, the bond loosened. Argentina needs the UK on issues like the G20 or in negotiations with the IMF. Recently, Minister of Health Carla Vizzotti asked Kent to intervene with his government and the AstraZeneca company so that the drug can be made in Argentina against the coronavirus conceived by the University of Oxford.

On the other hand, the two governments agree on the humanitarian project plan for the identification of the graves in the Falklands. And commercially, Argentina recorded a surplus with the UK with a maximum of US $ 556 million in 2020, same result of the import shutdown here.

Figueroa told the state agency that during the conference, the monarch was interested in the health situation that Argentina is experiencing with the pandemic. And he also said that the queen spoke to his wife, who is a diplomat and works in the cultural section of the embassy.

Figueroa studied at Colegio Cardenal Copello in Villa Devoto, is a lawyer at UBA and He was inducted into the National Foreign Service Institute in 1995. Identified with Peronist diplomats, during the government of Cristina Kirchner, he worked as deputy to the secretary of the Falklands at the time, Daniel Filmus – today at the same time – while the administration of Mauricio Macri sent him from first as Ambassador to South Africa, then later. in Cuba, as he had requested. In this time coincided with the medical treatment of Florencia Kirchner in Havana, and with the repeated trips to the island of the current vice-president to see her daughter.