The law of the sea is above ideologies. The Almirante Chief of Staff of the Navy (Ajema), Antonio Piñeiro, the highest military position of the Navy, went out to the Palestra this Friday to speak clearly and, to Vox questions, with a plan of the Ultra formation so that the Armed Forces block the paters. The Admiral General lied to Vox the sacred norm that governs for every sailor, civil or military. But he also wielded a pure human element. In command of a ship, Piñeiro has been seen in situations in which he has had to prioritize between shipwrecked to get the greatest number of people from the water, without saving them all of drowned.
In a defense forum, Piñeiro Javier Ortega Smith, councilor in Madrid of the Ultra Formation and the Law Lawyer, asked who directs the Navy since 2023 if the permanent presence of military vessels in the waters of the Strait, Ceuta, Melilla and Canary Islands had to be increased “before the permanent harassment of foreign ships and pressures of the mafias of the traffic of people”. “I’m going to be very clear,” the Admiral General replied bluntly. “It is a mandate that says the law of the sea: the Navy, if a Cayuco is located in the sea, its main mission is to save people if they are in danger. And there is no more.” Before listening to Piñeiro, Ortega Smith had thanked the military for his “loyal service to Spain.” However, after his response, contrary to the Vox framework, the party hinted in his social networks that the military has been influenced, and “easily”, by “the Sánchez government.”
But what Piñeiro said, which has a career of more than 40 years in the Navy behind, is precisely that the guidelines to combat illegal immigration do not have to leave the army, which is for other things, but of politics, “of the government.” Although, according to the new defense and space forum, organized by the New Player Economy – the military can and in fact help countries of origin of immigrants in surveillance work. The Admiral’s words, without being as the gunpowder on social networks, and that, says a knowledgeable source of the Navy, “has not sat well above.”
Born in Mugardos (A Coruña) in 1960, the military entered the Armed Forces in 1979. Five years later he rose to Ensign and won the gallons until Admiral in 2021 and Admiral General in 2023, with his appointment – by the Government indicated by the Minister of Defense, Margarita Robles – to hold the largest position within the Navy. He is known for his disciplined character, typical of a high military command, but those who have treated him also describe it for other qualities more specifically his: they assure that he likes to speak clearly, without gear, as he has shown this Friday before the question of the ultra councilor. For his next, he is also a person of enormous sympathy and great determination.
A partner very close to him since his youth years at the Naval School of Marín (Pontevedra) Tilda of “Direct” and “Franco”, a feature that reinforces another source consulted: “The frankness is what characterizes it.” As he has done today, “he does not avoid questions,” says this member of the Navy, who speaks well of the character and professional criteria of Piñeiro and adds that “it is not the typical lord who occupies a managerial position; it does not avoid controversies or has half inks.” In fact, about his style of directing the Navy (of the three armies, the second in number of troops after land) says that it is “completely different” to other ajemas. And he argues that “people are happy with him”, not only because the navy is known down, but because it has also gone through the operations command, the nucleus that directs the missions of the armed forces abroad. “It’s a good leader,” he concludes.
“Do not stab you in the back,” defends another high military position. “He is a man who takes care of his people,” he adds. As a sailor, another source highlights that it is one of the ones that has been in the sea longer, and also “in all kinds of missions.” He sees it as “a team person.”
Piñeiro is greatly worried about the useful life of Harriers Americans of the Armed Forces, which will end up being Retirees At the end of this decade. And every time he has occasion he remembers that the Ministry of Defense must look for an alternative, because – insists – the Navy cannot run out of war fighters. To this is added a difficulty: the new devices that the Ferrolano military has so much desire Juan Carlos I, Navy’s badge and from which Piñeiro was commander, is too short to allow conventional take -off and landing devices. Piñeiro fears that if there are no substitutes soon to Harriers —What, emphasizes defense, it would be convenient to be of European manufacture to maintain the strategic sovereignty of the continent – the Navy loses prestige and, consequently, the country it serves. “Spain has been strong whenever a strong armed one has had,” he usually repeats in his interventions. Under his leadership, Spain sent a war frigate in April, within the framework of a multinational exercise, to the waters of the Indo-Pacific, a region of high geostrategic voltage especially an ally like the US.
The current general admiral, married and with three children, has been brought into other international operations in which Spain participated. He was destined in the Persian Gulf in the Great Military Campaign headed by the United States in 1991 to expel Iraq from Kuwait, the small country that had invaded a year earlier. Under the command of NATO and in the waters of the Mediterranean, it also was part of the active effort operation, a huge naval patrol deployed in the Mediterranean against terrorism and the transit of weapons of mass destruction. Piñeiro Specialist in Communications (1989), Naval Guerra (1999) and graduated in the Nato Defense College. Surface officer, his naval career has been linked to surface ships, especially frigates.
Piñero knows the human structure of the Navy thoroughly, because he has occupied positions related to the personnel from 2018 until his appointment as Chief of the General Staff, two and a half years ago. In these powers it has been to hear the testimonies of military that “psychologically have been affected” after executing, law of the sea through, rescue tasks of naough migrants in the framework of the EU Sophia operation in the Mediterranean, which concluded in 2020 and was one of the operations that “has impacted” its “people,” he said this Friday. He attests to this, for the “helplessness” that he felt “to have 250 or 300 people in the water, who do not know how to swim, who are going to drown.” “And you with a rib or two rib [lanchas neumáticas de casco rígido] in which you can put 10 or 20, and that you have to choose between one and the other knowing that, in the time you go and come back, the one you were going to collect is no longer … that is very hard. ”
