Puntualidad no al lado de la diplomacia

Time was not on his side, no, no;

Spain’s Foreign Affairs Ministry on Tuesday sacked its consul in Boston, Pablo Sánchez-Terán, for “failure to meet his consular obligations.” The decision was made after the diplomat closed the Spanish consulate office at the usual time on Monday, despite the bomb attacks at the city’s marathon having taken place just a few hours earlier.

Diplomatic sources told Europa Press that the decision was verbally communicated to the diplomat on Tuesday, who told Spanish channel Marca TV on Monday night that the consulate had been closed after the attacks because “it was the usual time to do so.”

During that interview, Sánchez-Terán did not give out a telephone number for families of Spaniards at the marathon to call, and instead advised concerned viewers to phone the hospitals in Boston should they be unable to locate their loved ones.

Though the Foreign Ministry may have had their eyes on the guy for previous impolitic remarks;

In 2004, when he was the consul in the Argentinean city of Córdoba, statements he made during Columbus Day drew criticism. “We would be a lot worse under Inca, Aztec, Mapuche, Sioux or Apache civilizations,” he said at the time. “They have been romanticized by historians and anthropologists when it is well known that they were divided into casts and had an imperialist and bloodthirsty character.”