González Pons accuses the government of being “involved in the coup in Venezuela” and the PSOE demands his resignation | Spain

The deputy secretary general of the PP, Esteban González Pons, launched serious accusations on Thursday against the executive of Pedro Sánchez, to whom he attributes alleged “complicity” and “connivance” with the conditions in which the opposition candidate Edmundo González Urrutia left Venezuela on September 7. The opponent, since then seeking asylum in Spain, assured yesterday Wednesday that, when he was hosted at the Spanish embassy in Caracas, was forced by the Venezuelan government sign a document in which he accepted the victory of Nicolas Maduro. “For the departure of the elected president [en alusión a González Urrutia]”In his coercion and his sending into exile, the Spanish government was a necessary cooperator; The Spanish government is involved in the coup that took place in Venezuela,” González Pons said in an interview with esRadio. The PSOE demanded his immediate resignation.

The Venezuelan candidate, González Pons claims without proof, “was transferred to the Spanish embassy so that blackmail could be possible.” “The Spanish government is an accomplice of Maduro in the operation to decapitate the opposition in Venezuela. There is connivance on the part of Spain in a coup d'état in a foreign country,” insisted the PP leader, who also accused former president José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, who acted as mediator in the negotiation with Chavism to articulate the departure of Edmundo González. “Zapatero is the great mastermind of this plan, which is the dirtiest operation in the recent history of Spanish diplomacy,” he criticized. González Pons is one of the figures closest to Alberto Núñez Feijóo within the PP.

The president of the Community of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso (PP), followed in the footsteps of González Pons and also declared this morning that the government of Pedro Sánchez “is the main collaborator of the Venezuelan dictatorship,” reports Juan Jose Mateo.

The PSOE calls for the “immediate” resignation of the deputy secretary general of the popular parties. “It is intolerable that the head of international relations of the Popular Party is a hooligan“, declares the main party of the Executive in a statement. “González Pons' outbursts are incompatible with diplomacy. If this man were to one day lead Spain's foreign relations, we would find ourselves on the margins of international politics,” add the socialists, for whom González Pons' accusations “are of such gravity” that they raise doubts as to whether “he is aware of what he is saying. “In any case, these are not excuses, and his words today are the straw that broke the camel's back,” they conclude before demanding his resignation.

On Wednesday, after Edmundo González denounced in a video the alleged coercion to which he was subjected to validate Maduro's victory, Esteban González Pons already harshly attacked the Spanish government, the ambassador in Caracas and the Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares: “The ambassador of Sánchez is not only he consented to the blackmail at his home, he also authorized the taking of photos to continue the blackmail later. Albares, what do you know and you keep quiet? Where are you hiding? “This is the policy of gangsters and criminals, what a shame that the name of Spain is there,” he wrote on the social network X.