Spanish Foreign Minister José Manuel Albares told the Senate that if the Spanish government had done what the opposition had asked and recognised Edmundo González as the legitimate president of Venezuela, he would now “not be free in Madrid, but detained in Caracas.”
In his appearance before the senators, the minister explained that he had met with the Venezuelan opposition candidate for the July presidential elections, Edmundo González, who arrived in Spain on September 8 to request political asylum, after being summoned by the Venezuelan Prosecutor’s Office.
He added that Spain was “the first European country and one of the first in the world” to demand that Maduro provide the minutes of the elections and that in its diplomatic response it is thinking of the 200,000 Spaniards living in Venezuela, including the two detainees accused of preparing terrorist acts, as well as taking into account companies and workers, among other aspects.
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He also recalled that when the conservative PP party governed Spain, he never considered Maduro to be an authoritarian, when it was “the same government and the same country.”
The Foreign Minister also told the PP in the Senate that, “if they are so concerned about whether a dictatorship is or not,” why don’t they use that term for Franco, instead of approving autonomous concord laws without calling him that term.
“Why don’t they call Franco’s dictatorship a dictatorship?” Albares asked the PP spokesperson in the Senate, Alicia García, who asked him to follow the example of other Spanish socialists, such as the Minister of Defense, Margarita Robles, and the head of European diplomacy, Josep Borrell, and condemn the actions of Maduro, who was accused by the United Nations Mission (UN) of committing crimes against humanity, after the elections of July 28, in which he was recognized as the winner by the National Electoral Council (CNE).
García also asked Albares “why they are so afraid of upsetting Maduro,” saying “what is it that weighs so heavily on Zapatero’s complicit silence.”
Before putting the next question to the Government, Lorena Guerra, another PP senator, said into the microphone to Albares as he left the chamber: “Franco was a dictator.”
Madrid / EFE
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2024-09-20 08:18:51
