Spain

French presence in Spain and Spanish presence in France

Ambassador of France to Spain: Kareen Rispal
Ambassador of Spain to France: Victorio Redondo Baldrich
Consulates-General of France: Madrid, Barcelona, Bilbao and Seville
French community: 81,000 on the consular register (estimated unregistered nationals: around 60,000)
Spanish community in France: between 190,000 and 230,000 people

Summits and visits

The close bilateral ties are also evidenced by many bilateral visits:

• The French President received Mr Pedro Sánchez in Paris on 21 March 2022.
• The French Minister for Europe and Foreign Affairs visited Madrid on 4 April 2022.
• The Spanish Minister for Foreign Affairs, European Union and Cooperation, Mr José Manuel Albares Bueno, was received in Paris by the French Minister for Europe and Foreign Affairs, Ms Catherine Colonna, on 6 June 2022.
• President Macron met with Mr Pedro Sánchez and the Portuguese Prime Minister, Mr António Costa, in Brussels on 20 October 2022, and again on 9 December at the EU Med Summit in Málaga, notably to discuss energy interconnections and the H2Med project.
• The Barcelona Summit on 19 January 2023 brought together, in addition to the French President and the President of the Government of Spain, 10 members of the Spanish Government and 11 members of the French Government, to hold bilateral consultations.
• The Ministers of State for European Affairs met in Bordeaux on 4 May 2023 for consultations regarding the preparation of the Spanish Presidency of the Council of the European Union.

Cultural, scientific and technical cooperation

French-Spanish cooperation can be seen daily through extensive educational, linguistic and cultural exchanges. A branch of the Centre Pompidou was inaugurated in Málaga on 28 March 2015. The French cultural cooperation and action network is dense in Spain, formed by Institut Français branches or centres (Barcelona, Bilbao, Madrid, Seville, Valencia and Zaragoza) and 19 Alliance Française branches.

The French school network in Spain is the largest in Europe (22 schools) and third-largest globally, behind Lebanon and Morocco. French is the second most-popular foreign language in Spain (1.4 million students). In France, more than 3.25 million secondary school students study Spanish.

Spain has the world’s biggest network of schools that have been endorsed by LabelFrancÉducation (119), which recognizes the best bilingual schools. The “BachiBac” programme, which allows students to obtain the French Baccalauréat and the Spanish Bachillerato simultaneously, is offered in 117 schools in Spain. France is the third most popular host country among Spanish students in mobility programmes (around 6,000 per year). An agreement on university networks was signed in February 2017. This mobility is part of dynamic academic cooperation marked by more than 3,000 inter-university agreements, 220 dual degree programmes and 16 European university alliances that include French and Spanish partners.

Scientific and technical cooperation is based on cooperation agreements between the major French research and development institutions such as the National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), the French Institute of Health and Medical Research (INSERM), the National Institute for Agronomic Research (INRA) and the French Research Institute for the Exploitation of the Sea (IFREMER), and their Spanish counterparts. In the field of humanities and social sciences, the Casa de Velázquez, which is both a research centre and a hub for artistic creation focusing on the Mediterranean and Latin American spaces, is part of the network of French schools abroad.

Other cooperation

Police cooperation, and particularly counter-terrorism, which was historically centred on the fight against ETA and is now largely focused on the fight against Islamist terrorism and narcotics trafficking, continues to produce very good results. With a view to collective memory and historiography, on 1 October 2018, France transferred sealed ETA-related judicial proceedings to the Spanish authorities, in the presence of the French Prime Minister, Mr Édouard Philippe, and the President of the Spanish Government, Mr Pedro Sánchez.

In cross-border cooperation, interconnections are a key political and economic issue for Spain and France. These include rail infrastructure (Perpignan-Barcelona high-speed line) and electrical interconnections (a cable between Baixas and Santa Llogaia, doubling electricity capacity, was inaugurated on 20 February 2015, and a project for a submarine cable in the Bay of Biscay received €578 million in European funding in January 2018). The announcement on 20 October 2022 of the launch of a Barcelona-Marseille green energy corridor (H2Med project) shows the constant commitment of both countries in this field.