The Asylum of the Former Venezuelan Opposition Candidate Increases Political Tension in Spain

Pedro Canales

On Saturday, September 7th, Venezuelan opposition leader Edmundo González Urrutia landed at the Torrejón de Ardoz airbase, about fifty kilometers from Madrid, where he has requested political asylum in Spain, according to Spanish Foreign Minister José Manuel Albares.

The Spanish government’s decision to grant him asylum has led to increased political tension in Spain. Esteban González Pons, Deputy Secretary General of the Popular Party, criticized the decision, saying, “This is not a favor to democracy, but rather removing a problem for Nicolás Maduro’s dictatorship.”

Similarly, Vox MEP Hermann Tertsch accused the government of collaborating with Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro to exile “the winner of the elections.”

The opposition leader, who lost in the presidential elections held in Venezuela last July, where current President Nicolás Maduro was proclaimed the winner with 52% of the votes against Edmundo González’s 43%, had been sheltering for several days in the Spanish Embassy in Caracas. He had moved there from the Dutch diplomatic representation in the Venezuelan capital to escape a judicial summons issued by the Attorney General of the Republic, Tarek William Saab, who accused him of various crimes, including the publication of election records from July 28th, which showed Edmundo G. Urrutia receiving 67% of the vote.

According to statements from Delcy Rodriguez, Venezuela’s Executive Vice President, the governments of Caracas and Madrid negotiated for more than a week to facilitate the exile of the opposition leader “out of respect for international norms and to promote a peaceful climate in the country.” The Caracas government issued a safe-conduct for Edmundo González, who was then able to reach the capital’s airport and board the Spanish military plane waiting for him.

The Spanish government has merely stated that it “reiterates its commitment to the political rights and physical integrity of all Venezuelans, especially political leaders.”

The asylum request, made according to the government of Pedro Sánchez by the leader of the Democratic Unitary Platform, will be accepted. Former Spanish Socialist President José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero has mediated between the governments of Venezuela and Spain and the Venezuelan opposition.

In contrast to the departure of the former presidential candidate, the other right-wing opposition leader in Venezuela, Marina Corina Machado, who in the past sparked a major scandal in the country when she expressed support for “U.S. military intervention in Venezuela” to overthrow Nicolás Maduro’s Chavista regime, has announced her intention to remain in the country.

Corina Machado and other opposition leaders in Venezuela intend to install González Urrutia as president on January 10th in a move reminiscent of the case of Juan Guaidó, who was elected President of Parliament in January 2019. In the same month, Guaidó declared himself “Interim President of Venezuela,” and was recognized as such by some countries. The odyssey of Juan Guaidó ended two years later, in January 2021, when the European Union stopped recognizing him as interim president. The United States continued to support him until his star faded, and his “government in exile” disappeared.

The decision made by the Spanish government and the intransigence shown by the United States and the European Union towards “Maduro’s dictatorship in Venezuela” contrasts, for many observers, with the tacit and often explicit support from these same capitals for other dictatorships and countries where there is no control over internal electoral processes, and where the political opposition continuously denounces fraud, as has been the case in the recent elections in Algeria, which declared current President Abdelmadjid Tebboune the winner with a minimal participation rate of 23% of the electorate. Tebboune supposedly garnered just over 5.3 million votes, or 21% of the electorate. Neither Europe nor the United States question the legality or legitimacy of such results.