The Minister of Foreign Affairs refused to assess the diplomatic crisis that began this evening between Spain and Venezuela. The regime of Nicolas Maduro took advantage of the fact that the Spanish Minister of Defense, Marguerite Roblescalled it a “dictatorship” on Thursday for summoning his ambassador for consultations and urgently summoning the Spaniard to Caracas for a reprimand.
Jose Manuel Albares has been extremely cautious, except with the Popular Party. The main opposition party is demanding that he recognize the victory of Edmundo Gonzalez and call him “president-elect.” Pedro Sanchez He received him this Thursday in Moncloa outside of the scheduled time, without flags and without calling the press to explain in what capacity – besides “hero” – he was receiving him.
The minister disgraced the PP for “insisting that we treat Venezuela as a dictatorship and Don’t call another one that directly affects you, the Franco dictatorship, that.“Albares demanded from those of Alberto Nuñez Feijoo that they “support the government in the law on democratic memory, instead of letting themselves be vampirized by Vox.”
In order not to call the Chavista government a dictatorship himself, as Robles did in public statements on Thursday night, the foreign minister said he was not “neither a professor of constitutional law nor a political scientist”.
She thus avoided the remarks of her colleague in the Council of Ministers, but Nor did he criticize Robles for attacking the Chavista regime in this way.“We, the foreign ministers, are the last ones who should be putting labels on.”
Even if it didn’t save Maduro either: “What we want is the best relationship between the Spanish people and the people of Venezuela“. In other words, Albares recognizes that he speaks “with the democratic government and the Venezuelan opposition.” But his commitment is the “concerted, authentic and sovereignly democratic solution” in this Caribbean country.
Government position
The government demands see the minutes from the first day he does not recognize a Maduro’s ‘undemonstrable’ triumphsaid he is leading the position of the European Union in this crisis, and even opened himself to this recognition of González Urrutia “if it is assessed that it is good” for the objective of “that peaceful solution that respects democratic will Venezuelans.”
He did so in an amendment to the PP’s non-legislative proposal, which was ultimately not accepted this Wednesday by Congress.
The whole controversy arises from Moncloa’s refusal to recognize Edmundo González’s victory as “president-elect” of the country, after the elections of July 28. That is to say, for having granted political asylum to the diplomatic leader of the democratic opposition and “having done Maduro a favor”according to the theses of the Popular Party, which won the aforementioned vote in the Cortes to urge the government to recognize it.
Albares had already scheduled this radio interview in his official agenda, but it was a good thing for him to take advantage of this interruption in front of the public microphones of RNE to face the new diplomatic crisis he has to deal with. Sources from his ministry limited themselves to resolving the problem in the morning: “It is a sovereign decision from Venezuela on which we do not comment.
Of course, an official spokesman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs clarified what tone the government intends to maintain and which motivates, for example, the balance of not recognizing Maduro as the winner of the elections, but nor, for the moment, Edmundo González: “We are working to maintain relations between the brother people of Venezuela and the Spanish people.”
The plan was, even before the presidential elections of July 28, “pragmatism” and “prudence” politically and diplomatically.
But on this occasion, the main thing was that the Government marked the “fraternal” relations that it wants between the peoples: “The 200,000 Spaniards who live in this country, and almost as many Venezuelans who live in Spain, 120,000 have arrived since Pedro Sánchez has been president of the government.”
Albares recalled that it is these people, cultural relations and the commercial and economic interests Spanish companies in this Caribbean country, which he has protected with his “daily work” since becoming minister.
