Queen Letizia arrived in Honduras on Monday as part of a cooperative trip to deliver an emergency aid shipment with which to deal with the damage caused by Hurricanes Eta and Iota last November in much of the Central American country.
The official plane of the Spanish Air Force landed at the air base Colonel Hector Moncada de La Ceiba, where Dona Letizia was received by the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Lisandro Rosales.
From this town, the Spanish delegation, which also includes the Secretary of State for International Cooperation, Ángeles Moreno, embarking on a road trip to San Pedro Sula, about 190 kilometers, where tomorrow will develop all your agenda.
The queen’s journey and the displacement of aid are aimed at transfer the support and solidarity of Spain in the face of the critical economic situation and social in which the country is immersed by the devastation generated by the two hurricanes and the impact of the pandemic.
Spain has made available to the Honduran authorities a total of 120 tons of emergency equipment, the cost of which and that of its shipment is around half a million euros.
The aid includes 24,000 covid-19 rapid detection tests; 2,000 blankets; 2,420 folding beds; 3,325 batches of food, personal hygiene and for babies, as well as tents, plastic tarpaulins, mosquito nets and kitchen equipment and bottles, report the Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
The bulk of the cargo is transported on the queen’s plane, especially the coronavirus tests, on a second flight also from Madrid and by truck from Panama last weekend.
Upon her arrival in La Ceiba, the queen was also received by the mayor of La Ceiba, Jerry Sabio, who presented her with a wooden chest and a band painted for children with disabilities, and by the Spanish ambassador in Tegucigalpa. , Guillermo Kirkpatrick.
Because San Pedro Sula Airport was badly damaged by the floods, the queen’s plane had to land in La Ceiba and continue by car to the second city in the country, located in the north.
Dona Letizia’s agenda in Honduras will be concentrated in about six hours, during which she will hold a first meeting with the president, Juan Orlando Hernández, and his wife, Ana García, at the San Pedro Sula aerodrome and a colophon lunch of the visit.
The queen will begin the day with a meeting with members of the Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation (Aecid) and various NGOs to learn first hand about the situation in the most affected areas.
He will later visit in the municipality of La Lima a school severely donated by the hurricanes and a hostel that houses damaged families.
Honduras, with a population of 9.5 million, was the country where the passage of Eta in early November and Iota, two weeks later, caused the greatest devastation in Central America.
In addition to a hundred failures, it is estimated that around a million people were evacuated and about 100,000 are still housed in shelters and precarious camps.
Heavy rains and subsequent floods ravaged roads, homes, schools and crops and left many villages incommunicado, particularly in the northern and western regions.
The damage is comparable to that caused by Hurricane Mitch in 1998.
The consequences of meteorological phenomena have increased the number of covid-19 infections due to overcrowding in hostels and have further deteriorated the country’s already battered economy, considered one of the poorest in Central America.