The Queen begins her annual cooperation trip to Guatemala with violence against women and malnutrition as priorities

In 2014, due to the abdication of Juan Carlos I, the then Queen Sofia said goodbye to cooperation trips. Her last destination as her monarch: Guatemala. Chance has it that now, just ten years later, Queen Letizia travels to the same Central American country in what is her ninth trip with the Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation (Aecid). This Tuesday, the Queen begins a two-day route to give visibility to the investments that Spain makes in fields such as child nutrition and women.

These trips are key for Spanish cooperation and for the Government that seeks to maintain good relations with countries that it considers priority or strategic in its foreign policy. “Cooperation is one of the most effective and cheapest ways to have relations and political dialogue with other countries,” Iliana Olivié, principal researcher at the Elcano Royal Institute and expert in international development, explained by phone last week. And with this gesture, Spain is showing that it has great interest in Guatemala.

Doña Letizia will leave Madrid on Tuesday morning for Guatemala City, the country’s capital, where she will visit some of the 51 projects in which Aecid has been involved since 1987. For two days, the Queen will be able to see first-hand programs in which the Spanish Agency currently invests more than 30 million euros for child malnutrition, gender violence and support for youth through education and vocational training. Spain’s aid as a whole to Guatemala between 2016 and 2019 amounts to 80 million.

With her trip, the Queen intends to give visibility to social issues such as gender violence and child malnutrition – she will also briefly discuss with the first lady, Lucrecia Peinado, the situation of the mental health of the population in Guatemala, a topic that she arouses great interest―, and a boost to the more than 65 Spanish organizations that work in the field side by side with the Guatemalan authorities. “The relationships [entre ambos países] They are consolidated through development aid,” continues Olivié. It is an idea that Felipe VI already mentioned last week on the 25th anniversary of the Euroamerica Foundation: “The Ibero-American summits, the inaugurations of the presidents, the state and cooperation trips, the intense and stable presence of our companies and NGOs (…) demonstrate the active role of Spain in the region.” The nods from the Casa del Rey towards Guatemala have been constant in the last month. And as proof, the 2024 international award from the Princess of Girona Foundation to Susana Arrechea, a Guatemalan chemical engineer who, with her company New Sun Road Guatemala, implements digital community centers in rural Guatemalan communities without access to electricity from the national grid.

Inequality in the Central American country is among the highest in Latin America. 46% of children under five years of age suffer from chronic malnutrition, according to Aecid data, and the challenges in this area represent “important obstacles” in development, according to the United Nations alert in its Common Country Analysis report published in 2019. In On this two-day trip, Queen Letizia will be able to visit one of the 29 projects that Spain supports for water sanitation and malnutrition in San José de Chacayá (Near Lake Atitlán, in the center of the country). She will also learn about one of the nine women’s autonomy and violence care programs in Chimaltenango (near Antigua, in the center of the country) that the agency maintains in the country. “Violence against women is a continuum and is perpetuated as a tool of subordination and control of the lives and bodies of women,” explains the Aecid, which recorded in 2020 the complaints for the crimes of violence against women, sexual violence and femicides in a total of 78,787 victims.

Priority country

The Central American country, with 17 million inhabitants in which almost 45% are indigenous, is a “priority” place for Spain. This is an OECD category that implies that that country is suitable to be a recipient of humanitarian and development aid from other donor countries such as Spain. But in addition, Guatemala is especially relevant because it is included in the 12 Country Association and Alliance Frameworks, which also include, among others, Mauritania, Colombia, Paraguay and Senegal.

Although youth, nutrition and women are topics that she touches on almost daily on her agenda in Spain – and also abroad when she goes on a state trip with the King – Doña Letizia has studied the reality and context of Guatemala during the last weeks with meetings with experts in La Zarzuela, something common in the days before a trip with some State relevance. The Queen travels accompanied by the Secretary of State for Cooperation, Eva Granados Galinano and on this occasion, María Dolores Ocaña Madrid, her new secretary since April 30, will also make her debut on an international trip.

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