King Felipe VI visited this Thursday the headquarters of the United Nations Organization in New York. The Spanish monarch was invited to lunch by António Guterres, UN Secretary General.
In this way, without official statements and with institutional coverage as it was a private act, the king’s seventh meeting with the Portuguese diplomat who leads the multinational institution took place, adding to the four occasions on which he met with his predecessor, Ban Ki-Moon.
The last time he met face to face with Guterres was last May, at the Yuste monastery (Cáceres). The UN Secretary then received the Carlos V European Award from Felipe VI.
The invitation responded to Guterres’ desire to thank the monarch for “the generous and warm welcome” that he gave him in Yuste, spokesman Stéphane Dujarric told Efe. It was a meeting of a social nature, added Dujarric, who stressed that the Secretary General has always appreciated his personal friendship with Felipe VI, with whom he already shared lunch at the same venue in May 2022.
This was the first stage of a two-day visit by the monarch, who landed in New York this Thursday. In the afternoon, within the framework of the Instituto Cervantes, in Manhattan, King Felipe VI was preparing to deliver the first edition of the Joan Margarit International Poetry Prize, the Catalan poet distinguished with the Miguel de Cervantes Prize in 2019 who died in 2021. This first honor falls to the American poet Sharon Olds, winner of the Pulitzer Prize.
The monarch’s agenda, who has made more than a dozen visits to the United States since his proclamation, will close this Friday, again at the UN. The head of the Spanish State will present the award of the International Congress of Jurists to the President of the European Commission, Ursula Von der Leyden.
