First Steps (Spain - Ineland Summit)

Spain

Spain

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Madrid, España
16th January 2022

It was a cold day in Madrid, with a high-pressure mass of air allowing the low temperatures and the chilly wind to enter the Iberian Peninsula, making it more wintry than the past months. Hopefully for the good people of Madrid and its surroundings, another Storm Filomena was unlikely to happen anytime soon, and the weather was sunny, which made the temperatures raise as long as the day advanced. Meanwhile, the Spanish capital city was getting ready for hosting one of its mainstream events, FITUR, a tourism-oriented global meeting and a chance for countries to show to the world what they have to offer to visitors. Sometimes said to be the best meeting when it comes to tourism, IFEMA was getting ready to host a huge event again.

Meanwhile, Jesús Aguilar had been working in his office for an hour. For the first time in a few months, he had woken up and found nobody next to him. His spouse had to enter work earlier on Saturdays, and the children were away with their aunt, uncle and two cousins, who had just came to Madrid and whom the Papacito invited to his private residence. Nonetheless, our main character at the moment did not have a good sleeping routine, with jut 4 or 5 hours of rest every day, but today was different: he slept for an extra hour. And he would have carried on sleeping, if the alarm clock hadn't rang. Aguilar woke up, changed clothes, had breakfast and headed to the Consejo de Ministros' Building, where his main office was located.

There, he awaited for the arrival of his new friends from Ineland, the newest country of the European Union. Ineland was not just attractive to the Kingdom of Spain, but both countries had some things in common and good relationships were a must. That and, of course, how close Ineland was to the country the summit would be celebrated at. The President ordered his team to keep him informed, while the last details of the agenda that was about to be spoken about in today's summit were being finished by him.

Ineland

Somewhere over the Spanish coast

After approximately 2 hours of flight, Minister-President Vandervelde and Foreign Minister Merckx started buttoning their seatbelts again in preparation for approach to their destination. Not both of them were in the same shape after the flight time: while Frederick was used to bumpy rides from his years of conscription in the air force back in the day, but Kasper didn't share that professional background and was just back from an unpleasant visit to the aircraft's toilet. They were aboard "Presidential Air", the Inelander presidential aircraft, on their way to Madrid for the first bilateral summit between Ineland and Spain. It was probably also Frederick's last international trip before the general election scheduled for April. However, it was his opportunity to guarantee himself a lasting legacy as the mastermind behind Ineland's acquisition of a place of its own in the European table. In the EU of 2022, Spain was one of those countries to be taken into account.

After the summit with Duchian prime minister a few days prior, many of the topics in the agenda were similar to that one: economic cooperation, acquisition of military hardware, the establishment of joint transportation infrastructure, and cooperation in the international arena.

The former SINA passenger aircraft turned into VIP executive aircraft descended gently before landing in Madrid airport. Once on the ground, a SUV from the Inelander embassy in Madrid was waiting for them to carry them to the seat of the Spanish executive where president Aguilar was awaiting. During the 20 minute ride along Madrid's streets, Frederick and Kasper went over the details of the meeting, with a special detail placed upon the possibility of cooperation in potentially working towards establishing an international high speed rail route between both countries. Sooner than they though, the car stopped. They were at their destination.

Spain

Someone knocked on the door, enough sign for Aguilar to anticipate to what he was going to be told. With the Spanish Minister for Foreign Affairs, European Union and Cooperation inside his office, that knocking had to be from Roberto, the President's secretary and one of his advisors. The Spanish President was not wrong, and the mentioned secretary opened the door with quite a surprising face, not expecting either his boss and the Foreign Affairs Minister to be that ready. The secretary spoke: "Mister President, Minister, they have just entered into the Palace area. They are here" Aguilar answered with a smile: "Thanks Roberto, get everything ready if it is not yet, please". Roberto nooded and dissapeared from the scene just like he had appeared, by surprise.

Jesús and Alfonso then left the office and went downstairs to the entry of the Consejo de Ministros' building, where the meeting would take place. The walk was not long, and Aguilar had several years of experience on his back, enough to know where and how to position. That, added to his protocol classes when he arrived to Moncloa were enough to serve a good show to the press, who was always looking for any mistake the young, popular President of Spain could do. Dastis headed to the Salón Tapiès while the doors of Moncloa opened, and suddenly the Inelandic car came to an stop. The employees opened the doors of the car and the Spanish President's guests came out of it, heading to the right-hand side of the President. Jesús shook hands with both, smiling, after saying "Good morning, welcome to Spain", and the press took as many photos as they could.

The 3 men entered the building, followed by the photographers and the TV cameras that were attempting to record that moment for the news to show it later, at 3 o'clock. As they entered the Tapiès hall, Alfonso Dastis was there, smiling too and waiting for the guests. He took the President's role to show the Inelandics where to seat, after shaking hands with and greeting them. The journalists took more and more photos, and when the time was up, everybody left the room and the politicians were left alone. Jesús Aguilar was the first to speak: "Minister-President Vandervelde, Foreign Minister Merckx, good morning and welcome to Spain! It is such an honour and a huge pleasure to welcome you to the Palacio de la Moncloa, my official residence as you may know. How are you both feeling today? Would you like smething to drink?"

After their answeres were given, Dastis spoke: "I share the same sentiment with the President, it is great to have you both here and to finally held this veident portant summit for our nations. Before we start, he President and I would like to gift you both this Atlas of Europe, which is an exact replica of a very old atlas that can be found in the Spanish National Library, I hope you both like it". Said Dastis, handing the gift to his new friends. After the answer ffloor again: "And ngation, Aguilar took the floor again: "And now we are ready, what is the first topic you would like to speak about? Is there something which is more prioritary than any other?"

Ineland

As the door opened and president Aguilar and minister Dastís appeared, both Frederick and Kasper took a step ahead to shake their counterparts' hands.

FV: Mr. President, it is a pleasure to be here. Thank you so much for inviting us to your wonderful country.

After the initial photo session with the press, the Spanish leaders presented them both with a historical atlas of Europe of Spanish making.

KM: Thanks a lot for this wonderful present, it will be a great addition to the library of the Minister-President's office. We ourselves have also brought a present, Kasper said before revealing a little box. Inside this box there is a glass cube containing a little sample of dust from comet Bidener's tail, obtained during our sample recovery mission back in 2005.

After the brief gift exchange, they went directly onto business.

FV: We'd like to begin this first meeting of ours by addressing two issues that are pretty much connected, those being transportations infrastructures and tourism. Our government is keen in further expanding our connectivity to other European countries, preferrably through sustainable means such as railway. However, and until there is a rail connection through the Gibraltar strait, Inelandic-Spanish railway links are pretty limited and impractical. Therefore we would like to work on the opening of air routes between Ineland and Spain through both Royal Inelander Airlines and Spanish airliner companies alike. At the same time, the Inelander tourism industry, unlike the economy in a broader sense, hasn't yet managed to start recovering from the previous decade's financial crash. Thus we think that cooperation in that field, in which Spanish tourism is widely aknowledged as an example, could be helpful. Therefore we'd be open to easening conditions for Spanish touristic businesses to operate in Ineland.

Spain

Aguilar observed the dust sample the Inelandics have gifted to him, amazed. He enjoyed knowing about astronomy, even though he was not good enough for sciences or science-related doctrines. He preferred the world of law, of the many social sciences there were around the World. He was very smart, just not attracted to Phisics or Chemistry, to say the least. Aguilar spoke: "Thank you very much for this gift, Mr. Merckx! It is amazing to receive such a surprising and beautiful gift like this one, I am very honoured to get some dust from the Bidener comet tail."

When the presentations were mostly made, the summit could continue. Both the Minister for Foreign Affairs, European Union and Cooperation, Alfonso Dastis; and the President of the Spanish Government, Jesús Aguilar, listened carefully to what the Inelandic representatives had to say. Dastis took some notes to remember everything when an agreement or a treaty were to be made. Both transportation infrastructures and tourism were important issues for the Kingdom of Spain, and Aguilar seemed very interested on what his counterpart had to say. When he came to an end, the Spanish President spoke to both representatives:

"I am very pleased to hear about your intentions, Mr. Vandervelde. When it comes to talking about tourism and transport infrastructures, Spain is one of the most experienced countries. As you know, we have been doing progress recently on opening and expanding our High Speed Rail service to a vast majority of towns around the country, and even if the rail links between our countries would be ineficient, I would like to invite some of your rail companies to enter the Spanish High Speed Rail sector, in an attempt to liberalizate, even more, the competency Renfe has. About airlines, Spain and AENA are always open to welcoming new airlines to the country, and I am sure that the national main carriers, like Iberia or Air Europa, will be willing to stablish new routes between our nations.

When it comes to tourism, I believe that your proposal would be a good idea, and I would like to add that Spain would be willing to do the same. Minister Dastis has also proposed me, before the summit started, to have a free movement area between both nations, so we can make both destinations more attractive as it would require less paperwork and there would be far less barriers for travellers. Maybe some companies of the tourism sector, specially travel agencies, will be interested in starting operations in Ineland, I will tell the Minister for Economy as soon as we fints this summit so he can start making some contacts."

Ineland

Kasper and Frederick listened closely to their Spanish counterparts and as the conversation advanced the proposals sounded very promising. The opening of the Spanish high-speed rail network to competition by the Inelander public operator sounded specially attractive as it would give SICF much needed experience in the field of operating high-speed rail services in order to provide a better service at home.

FV: We are really pleased to hear your views on these areas. The opening of your high-speed rail to competition is specially appreciated as participation by SICF would grant our public operator highly valuable experience to adopt in Ineland. We'd love to be able to reciprocate in this aspect, but as we are just now deploying our network our government wants to give a two year period before liberalisation of services to give time to users to get used to high speed rail as an alternative and create a market that is big enough to guarantee a profitable operation by multiple companies. And regarding the free movement area we would be more than pleased to work in that direction, maybe even as a first step to creating a broader, multinational free movement area.

As the aspects of economic cooperation seemed clearer, Kasper proceded to open another area for discussion.

KM: At the moment, we are working on the expansion of our defence forces and to that end we are in need of military hardware. Currently we are preparing the acquisition of ships for our navy but soon we will be preparing the acquisition of airplanes. Our Ministry of Defence has issued an open call for contractors to build those ships, with a further one to be launched for aircraft soon. Thus we would like to invite Spanish companies to apply for those contracts. Other governments and contractors have expressed interest already, and as it is a wide call we will distribute the orders for vessels among several contractors and we'd be glad to have Spanish options on our table.

Spain

Aguilar nooded on the comments the Inelandic delegation said, and left Dastis to speak about the military part as he had been researching about it way deeper than Aguilar had had. The Foreign Minister spoke, for the first time, on the summit:

"The Spanish military enterprises are willing to supply the Inelandic Army with ships, of course, it would be a great honour. I would like to know what Ineland is looking for, frigates, corvettes... We have 2 kind of frigates on sale, the general one being the Brandenburg-class; a minesweeper, replenishment ships and other miscellaneous. What equipment does Ineland count with so far?

Concerning also the military sector, Spain would be interested on establishing bases in Ineland, but before we make the final decision we would like to know if your country is looking towards joining any military alliance. That information is crucial for us, however if you do not wish to give us an answer it will be fine. We do not like to influence foreign countries' policies or something like that".

Ineland

Frederick and Kasper were glad to hear of the Spanish government's willingness to provide equipment for the Defence Forces.

FV: At the moment, our navy is pretty well equipped to control both our coasts and the EEZ. However, we are looking forward to increasing our power projection capabilities farther from our EEZ. In the past months we have been observing Spanish produced equipment and we are particularly interested in the Baden-Württemberg and Sachsen class frigates. Specifically we'd like to acquire 4 vessels of each class. On the bases and alliances issue, I think it is best I yield the word to Minister Merckx as he's probably going to be the next head of government and those aspects he probably can better comment on.
KM: The possibility of establishing joint bases between both Ineland and Spain in Inelander soil is an interesting prospect that we are really interested in exploring, given that there is a reciprocity and joint bases can be established in Spain, of course. However, as you were pointing out, the alliance membership is a factor to be taken into account and might lead to tensions. As you are probably aware, we are going to hold a general election by the end of March. Even though the result is still far off, most opinion polls predict a renewal of the current government composition and both our party and the majority of our parliamentary allies have set up ECON membership as a short-term goal. I understand though that, given the alliance landscape in the region and the fact that you are a Treaty of Telum signatory, establishing joint bases might raise some eyebrows. We are however, regardless of military alliance allegiances, interested in establishin a Hispano-Inelander partnership that can supersede any kind of situation inter-alliance rivalries might drag us into. Therefore, even though a joint bases program might be too much of a controversial issue, we'd like to establish joint weapons development programmes with Spain.