The President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, follows with astonishment the criticism of the PP regarding his decision to get out of Venezuela in an official Spanish plane and grant political asylum to opposition candidate Edmundo González. The popular insist, as Esteban González Pons said, that this decision “does not serve democracy, it eliminates a problem of the Maduro dictatorship.” Asked about this accusation in Shanghai, where a new Cervantes Institute was inaugurated – a milestone that makes Spain the only country in the world with two cultural centers in China, as explained by its director, Luis García Montero -, responded Sánchez, in an informal conversation with the journalists who accompany the trip, with visible indignation: “Any political reading is inappropriate, it is a question of humanity” to grant political asylum to the seasoned diplomat, who decided to flee to Spain with his wife due to the certain risk of ending up in prison.
Sánchez assures that he will receive González – probably in La Moncloa, although it is not yet confirmed – this week, as soon as he returns to Spain, that is, from Thursday. The president presents the whole operation as a humanitarian matter, and that is why he indicates that he will question the opponent about his personal and family situation.
Sánchez acknowledges that the fact that the opposition candidate was forced to leave Venezuela to seek political asylum in Spain shortly after elections that he won with an overwhelming majority, according to the opposition, is clear evidence that the situation is very complicated in Venezuela.
Other sources from the Spanish government also present during the trip to China They show their discomfort with the reaction of the PPwhich tries to establish the idea that González's departure from Venezuela is proof of the proximity between the Maduro regime and the Sánchez executive.
These sources point out that these criticisms are an example of the PP's “hypocrisy” because the Spanish government is the one that most clearly demands from the first moment that Maduro show the election records.
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Spain will not recognize Maduro's claimed victory at any time until it shows these minutes. In fact, Sánchez called opponent González a “hero” on Saturday, when the operation for his departure from Venezuela was already being finalized. The PP demands that Sánchez recognize González as president-elect, but La Moncloa does not believe that this path is appropriate. Sánchez has already done so with Juan Guaidoand it turned out to be a useless operation.
Spain and the European Union now find themselves in a different position, which is to pressure Maduro to recognize his defeat and relinquish power or call new elections, but with other methods, not recognizing as president-elect a González who seems to have thrown in the towel when seeking asylum in Spain.
Executive sources insist that Spain did not favor the departure of González or any other, it simply offered its help in case the opponents needed it in an environment of growing tension in Caracas where the Spanish embassy, inviolable territory according to international agreements, It can become a place of refuge for people persecuted by the regime.
The government is particularly unhappy with the idea that the PP is spreading that Sánchez negotiated with Maduro for González's departure. There was no political negotiation, insists the president's entourage, there is no counterpart, there were only technical discussions to allow the entry of the official Spanish plane that took him out of Caracas and also to guarantee that there would be no incident during the transfer. Nothing else. Spain, they insist, has become a refuge for 100,000 Venezuelans, including several opposition leaders, precisely because it is a consolidated democracy that defends human rights and does not support the Maduro regime at all, quite the opposite.