Armando G. Tejeda

Correspondent

The newspaper La Jornada
Monday, September 9, 2024, p. 29

Madrid. Edmundo González Urrutia, the 75-year-old Venezuelan opposition leader who ran in the presidential elections on July 28, became a political exile in Spain yesterday, a status granted to him by the government of socialist Pedro Sánchez, who referred to him as hero and thanks to the intervention crucial of former president José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero.

González has remained in hiding since the elections and in recent weeks has taken refuge in the headquarters of the Dutch embassy in Venezuela, from where he was transferred on Thursday to the Spanish diplomatic representation, precisely when he had already been promised political asylum.

Accompanied by his wife, Mercedes López, and the Secretary of State for Foreign and Global Affairs of Spain, Diego Martínez Belío, González traveled on a Spanish army plane, made a stopover in Santo Domingo and the Azores Islands and landed at the military airport of Torrejón de Ardoz, in Madrid.

In his first statements from Spain, the politician denounced having suffered coercion and threats for not allow his departure from the country. In a 40-second audio message released by his campaign team, Gonzalez said that his departure She was surrounded by pressure, coercion and threatsand added: I trust that we will soon continue the fight to achieve freedom and the restoration of democracy in Venezuela..

Edmundo González thus joins a long list of Venezuelan leaders who are in Spain and who are maneuvering from here to overthrow the government of Nicolás Maduro, including former leader Leopoldo López and his wife, Lilian Tintori; former mayor of Caracas Antonio Ledesma; former president of the Venezuelan Parliament Julio Borges; former general Miguel Rodríguez Torres, accused of conspiracy against the Maduro government when he was Minister of the Interior and Justice and for which he was imprisoned in 2018, and activist Loren Saleh, accused of planning terrorist acts against the State.

Spain’s Foreign Minister José Manuel Albares confirmed that the request for asylum was made by your request and that he sent it to Spanish diplomacy when he was taking refuge in the Dutch embassy in Venezuela. Albares said that there was no political negotiation with the Maduro government, which contradicts the statements made from Caracas.

Josep Borrell, the European Union’s top foreign policy official, said that in the face of repression, political persecution and direct threats to their safety and freedomGonzalez He has had to request political asylum and accept the protection offered by Spain..

This diplomatic maneuver pitted the government against the largest opposition party, the right-wing Popular Party, the main ally of the Venezuelan opposition in Spain, whose spokesman, Esteban González Pons, stated that Sánchez and the corrupt offices of Rodríguez Zapatero should be sparing in self-praise. Removing González Urrutia without recognizing him as legitimate president is not doing a favor to democracy, but rather removing a problem from the dictatorship. Cuba would do the same if asked..