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Interview
5 June 2016 2.00 h

Marcos Mandojana

US Consul General in Barcelona

Friends and allies

Established 218 years ago, the US consulate in Barcelona has long been at the centre of bilateral relations

Marcus Mandojana Each Wednesday at 7.10 pm, El Punt Avui TV airs the series of interviews, Catalan Connections. Marcela Topor talked to the US Consul General in Barcelona, Marcus Mandojana.
We try to explain to Washington the points of view
We work hard to encourage investment and trade
Mr Man­do­jana, you took up your po­si­tion in Au­gust. What has the ex­pe­ri­ence been like so far?
Barcelona is a very pop­u­lar des­ti­na­tion among diplo­mats from all over the world, not only be­cause of the rea­sons tourists come here: the cli­mate, food, beaches, cul­ture, music, but also be­cause it is a very in­ter­est­ing po­si­tion, a great con­sulate, and a lot of us ap­plied for the job. I com­peted with 50 other diplo­mats for this po­si­tion and I was lucky to win the lot­tery. I came here with my fam­ily and the ex­pe­ri­ence has been fan­tas­tic since Au­gust; we feel very wel­come here and we've re­ally en­joyed trav­el­ling all over Cat­alo­nia.
The con­sulate in Barcelona has a long his­tory.
It was founded 218 years ago, by our sec­ond pres­i­dent of the United States. Amer­ica was a very young coun­try back then, and Cat­alo­nia was a very im­por­tant cen­tre of com­merce. For the US it was im­por­tant to start a mis­sion here and since then our trade has only grown.
You have trav­elled all over the world since very young.
My par­ents are both from Ar­gentina and em­i­grated to the United States. My fa­ther was a doc­tor and went to Puerto Rico for a med­ical res­i­dency, and I was born there. Then we moved to Wash­ing­ton DC and he joined the US army as a doc­tor, so grow­ing up we moved to sev­eral places, like Ger­many, Hawaii, Ten­nessee...it was an en­rich­ing ex­pe­ri­ence. Then I found I wanted to be a doc­tor, too, and I went to col­lege with that idea. But luck­ily, at our uni­ver­si­ties we take a va­ri­ety of courses and I saw that my pas­sion was in­ter­na­tional af­fairs. So I left the med­ical ca­reer and pur­sued the diplo­matic one, and have con­tin­u­ously moved to var­i­ous places ever since.
What is the longest time you've lived in one place?
The longest was four years, in my whole life, in high school in Ten­nessee and Vir­ginia, near Wash­ing­ton DC. I'm very used to it now, I may even say I'm ad­dicted to it.
When did you be­come a diplo­mat?
My un­der­grad­u­ate de­gree was in bi­ol­ogy, and right when I was fin­ish­ing uni­ver­sity and had been ac­cepted to med­ical school, I met an am­bas­sador and I asked him about this ca­reer. So, I left my med­ical path and did an exam at George­town in in­ter­na­tional af­fairs and after the mas­ters joined the for­eign ser­vice in 2000.
After liv­ing and work­ing in so many dif­fer­ent coun­tries how did you find Barcelona?
After see­ing dif­fer­ent coun­tries in Asia, South Amer­ica, Eu­rope, I can say that it's hard to beat Barcelona. I had been here be­fore about 13 years ago, for about 10 days, but since we came we have learnt a lot more about the city and Cat­alo­nia on the whole: the castellers tra­di­tion, the food and wine, the sea, the foot­ball...we've been in Girona for Temps de Flors, Tar­rag­ona, Lleida... Barcelona is a fan­tas­tic city and a per­fect place.
What does the US con­sulate in Barcelona do?
We try to do a bit a bit of every­thing but our top pri­or­ity is help­ing US cit­i­zens. There are some 20,000 liv­ing in our con­sulate dis­trict, plus 725,000 vis­ited last year, plus 6,000 stu­dents who come to study in Cat­alo­nia each year, so that keeps us busy. But we also have the po­lit­i­cal func­tion of fol­low­ing what's hap­pen­ing in Spain and Cat­alo­nia and try­ing to ex­plain to Wash­ing­ton the dif­fer­ent points of view of po­lit­i­cal of­fi­cials. The same on the eco­nomic side: how is the econ­omy going, what are the poli­cies, what the fu­ture looks like. We help Amer­i­can com­pa­nies that want to do busi­ness here, and we help com­pa­nies from here to do busi­ness in the US, and we have this of­fice of pub­lic diplo­macy, which is get­ting close to the peo­ple, in­clud­ing so­cial media, the stu­dent ex­changes such as Ful­bright ex­changes – Cata­lan uni­ver­si­ties have 260 for­mal agree­ments with US uni­ver­si­ties. We do a lot of se­cu­rity co­op­er­a­tion, with all the of­fi­cials, to make sure we keep our coun­tries safe.
Where did your pas­sion for Barça come from?
Part of it's my Ar­gen­tine par­ents. When I was five years old I started play­ing soc­cer, and every­where I've moved since I've still played. It's amaz­ing how many chil­dren play soc­cer in the US, boys and girls. But what hap­pens is that chil­dren wouldn't pur­sue it as a ca­reer, as for them in the US their idols are Michael Jor­dan in bas­ket­ball or Amer­i­can foot­ball or base­ball. But now there is a pro­fes­sional league and there is more in­ter­est in mak­ing it a pro­fes­sional ca­reer. And Barça is open­ing their first of­fice in New York, which is very ex­cit­ing.
There have been peace­ful demon­stra­tions on Sep­tem­ber 11 for four years. How is this seen from the US?
I saw the last demon­stra­tion last year. When they see the head­lines in Wash­ing­ton and around the world, with so many peo­ple in the streets, we get a lot of ques­tions: if there is vi­o­lence, is there is a riot...But no, it's very peace­ful, with fam­i­lies going there to­gether. So one of the val­ues of hav­ing a con­sulate and a local pres­ence is that we can ex­plain the re­al­ity, and the points of view. And about Cat­alo­nia in re­la­tion to Spain and in­de­pen­dence, our po­si­tion has re­mained the same, it is very clear: it is an in­ter­nal mat­ter for Spain, and as pres­i­dent Obama and sec­re­tary Kerry have said, Spain is an im­por­tant ally for the US, and we want to keep re­la­tions with a strong and uni­fied Spain.
The TTIP trade agree­ment be­tween the US and the EU has been quite con­tro­ver­sial, what is your opin­ion of it?
I am fa­mil­iar with the con­tro­versy. I was for­tu­nate enough to work on sev­eral trade agree­ments be­fore, in South Amer­ica and Asia. There is usu­ally con­tro­versy with pro­jects like that, es­pe­cially at the end. The good news is that every trade agree­ment we've ever ne­go­ti­ated has been ap­proved, im­ple­mented and passed. The one with Asia was very hard, a lot of dif­fer­ent coun­tries, dif­fer­ent economies, but we've all been able to come to an agree­ment for some­thing that's ben­e­fi­cial for our coun­tries. So with Eu­rope, we're very con­fi­dent that, shar­ing an econ­omy and val­ues, if we came to an agree­ment with coun­tries that were so dif­fer­ent from us, we are close to com­ing to an agree­ment with the EU.
When will it be con­cluded?
Talks began in 2013. We've had 13 rounds and there's a 14th com­ing up in July. Our and the EU's goal is to try to fin­ish ne­go­ti­a­tions by the end of year, for a few rea­sons: the change of US ad­min­is­tra­tion, and a lot of elec­tions in Eu­rope, not be­cause we think the agree­ment can't be ne­go­ti­ated with other gov­ern­ments, but it's a delay
Is that re­al­is­tic?
The US and the EU have known each other and had trade is­sues for a long time, and we know what the sen­si­tive top­ics are on both sides. It's just a mat­ter of po­lit­i­cal will to fin­ish it, and I think there is that will. Pres­i­dent Obama has re­peat­edly said that we have this goal and ne­go­tia­tors on both sides have said that it is pos­si­ble. But I want to stress that it is not the end: the text is fin­ished, the coun­tries sign it, and then the text be­comes pub­lic and then we have this process when every coun­try has to im­ple­ment and ap­prove it, so it takes time after the text is agreed. Our goal is to fin­ish the text and then we'll see how the pub­lic of each coun­try re­acts.
There are more and more US tourists com­ing to Barcelona, es­pe­cially cruise lin­ers.
We had 725,000 last year, which is an 11% in­crease on the pre­vi­ous year. And an im­por­tant thing to note is that more than 40% of the Amer­i­cans who stay in a hotel in Barcelona are here for busi­ness. In Cat­alo­nia, there are 700 US com­pa­nies op­er­at­ing in bio­med­i­cine, com­mu­ni­ca­tion, tech­nol­ogy...
Is there a grow­ing trend?
That's been the ten­dency: more and more in­vest­ment, more trade, more ex­ports. Ex­ports from Cat­alo­nia last year grew by over 20%. Over 2,700 com­pa­nies ex­port from Cat­alo­nia to the US reg­u­larly and there are about 500 Cata­lan com­pa­nies in the US. We are work­ing hard to deepen this re­la­tion­ship and en­cour­age in­vest­ment and trade from both sides, so the trend is very pos­i­tive.
Will you have the first woman pres­i­dent in the US?
We have the first woman fi­nal­ist, and now it looks like Bernie Sanders is still in the race on the De­mo­c­ra­tic side. The num­bers show that Hillary Clin­ton will most likely be the de­mo­c­ra­tic nom­i­nee at the Con­ven­tion in July, and on the other side Don­ald Trump for the Re­pub­li­can party. Until No­vem­ber a lot can hap­pen. Right now polls are very close but it's the clos­est we've ever been to hav­ing a woman pres­i­dent of the US. It would be a nice thing to have at some point soon in the US, but it's re­ally an un­pre­dictable elec­tion this year, with so many can­di­dates and so many opin­ions. It's a very in­ter­est­ing and dif­fer­ent elec­tion from nor­mal.
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