The emir of Qatar, Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani, has announced that his energy-rich Gulf country is ready to boost investments in Spain worth 5,000 million dollars (4,720 million euros) in the coming years in a gala dinner held on Tuesday with King Felipe VI and Queen Letizia acting as hosts at the Royal Palace in Madrid. The dinner attracted key business leaders, including some of the major energy companies.
Qatar and Spain celebrate this year the fiftieth anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations and the Emir stressed that there are great opportunities to increase mutual investments and achieve common interests in all fields. Some agreements that were sealed the following day in a meeting with the President of the Executive, Pedro Sánchez, at the Palacio de La Moncloa.
Although investment details have not been made public and energy has not been specifically mentioned, with the European Union struggling to find alternatives to Russian energy, Qatar has been sought out to help fill the gap with natural gas exports. liquefied, which Spain leads in the region with six processing plants. Beyond aspiring to diversify its own energy mix, Spain is committed to becoming an energy hub for Europe and to this end is launching a series of public investment projects using its share of the recovery funds.
To celebrate this collaboration, the King and Queen of Spain, Felipe and Letizia, hosted a dinner held at the Royal Palace in Madrid, where they received the Emir and his wife and gave a dinner attended by other important guests.
Among the hundred guests gathered in the Gala Dining Room around the imperial table were the presidents of Iberdrola, Ignacio Sánchez Galán; from Santander, Ana Botín; from Ferrovial, Rafael del Pino; from Acciona, José Manuel Entrecanales; El Corte Inglés, Marta Álvarez and the businesswoman Alicia Koplowitz. The president of the CEOE, Antonio Garamendi, among others, as well as Sánchez himself, several ministers and the mayor of Madrid, José Luis Martínez-Almeida, also attended.
On the same day, the king and queen offered him a lunch at the Zarzuela Palace after the official reception given at the Royal Palace, which was also attended by Pedro Sánchez. The two married couples have appeared together through the door that leads to the Zarzuela gardens and posed before the graphic media and the Emir showed his admiration for the landscape that surrounds the palace, nestled in the Monte del Pardo. “Very nice (very nice),” he told Queen Letizia.
The Foreign Minister, José Manuel Albares; his Qatari counterpart, Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al Thani, and the respective ambassadors.
As a gesture of the importance that Spain attaches to this trip, the monarch went to the El Pardo Palace on Monday to greet Al Thani upon his arrival at his residence in Madrid, something unusual in this type of visit. The king and the sheikh also met last Sunday in Abu Dhabi to offer condolences to the former head of state of the United Arab Emirates, Sheikh Khalifa Bin Zayed al Nahyan.
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