“Edmundo González is a hero that Spain is not going to abandon.” Just a few hours after Pedro Sánchez spoke these words before the PSOE Federal Committee, the Venezuelan opposition figure boarded a Spanish Air Force Falcon in Caracas bound for Spain, which would grant him the asylum he had requested with his wife. The process lasted eight days and former president José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, who maintains fluid relations with both the Venezuelan government and the opposition in that country, played “a decisive role,” according to the sources consulted.
Before going to the military base of Torrejón de Ardoz, where he landed on Sunday afternoon after stopping in the Dominican Republic and the Azores, the opposition candidate to Nicolás Maduro in the elections of July 28 spent two days – starting on September 5 – at the headquarters. residence of the Spanish ambassador to Venezuela, Ramón Santos. Previously, it was the diplomatic representation of the Netherlands in the Latin American country that had hosted him.
Edmundo González remained in the Dutch diplomatic office for more than a month, after the situation heated up when the Venezuelan electoral authority declared Maduro’s victory. The last time he appeared in public was on July 30, two days after the elections, during a demonstration in front of the UN headquarters in Caracas.
The opposition has denounced “fraud” and has been claiming since the same election date that the documents it has prove that González won, while the international community demands that Venezuela publish all these documents. The United States and some Latin American countries, such as Argentina and Uruguay, have recognized González as the winner, while the EU is keeping up the pressure before explicitly pronouncing on results that it does not recognize anyway.
An agreed exit
González was welcomed with the certainty that the Venezuelan justice system would go after him, as it had done with other opposition leaders. And in recent days, the barrier has been closing in. At the end of August, the prosecutor’s office summoned the former diplomat to testify as the subject of an investigation for crimes of conspiracy, usurpation of functions and incitement to disobedience. The refusal to appear at the justice offices during the three calls led the prosecutor’s office to request an arrest warrant on September 3.
At that time, contacts with senior officials of the Maduro government to facilitate the exile of the opposition candidate had already begun with the intermediary of Zapatero, after the Venezuelan opposition turned to the former Spanish president to avoid a trial against González whose most likely destination was his incarceration. The sources consulted assure that the silence that the former Spanish president has maintained on what has happened in Venezuela since the elections is related to the preservation of this capacity for negotiation, since he is one of the few leaders who can dialogue at the same time with the Venezuelan opposition. and Maduro’s environment.
“There has been no political negotiation, but there is a capacity for dialogue with the government and the opposition,” diplomatic sources emphasize about the agreement that allowed the departure of Gonzalez and his wife, which was communicated practically at the same time from Caracas and Madrid.
“Once the relevant contacts between the two governments were established, the extremes of the case were overcome and in accordance with international legality, Venezuela granted the safe conduct due for the sake of the tranquility and political peace of the country,” said Venezuelan President and Vice President Delcy Rodríguez in a statement posted on Instagram.
Almost at the same time, the announcement of the Spanish government took place. In Foreign Affairs, they admit that contacts with the Venezuelan government allowed Edmundo González and his wife to be transferred from the ambassador’s residence to the airport, where they boarded the Falcon of Group 45 of the Air Force accompanied by the Secretary of State for Foreign and World Affairs, Diego Martínez Belío. In Torrejón de Ardoz, the Secretary of State for Latin America and Spanish in the World, Susana Sumelzo, received them.
From the plane, Edmundo González spoke with the Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares, who, at the end of the process, surprised him on a trip to China with President Pedro Sánchez. “The Spanish government is committed to the political rights and physical integrity of all Venezuelans,” said the head of diplomacy via the social network X (formerly Twitter).
Different reception of González’s exile
Edmundo González’s exile has received a different reception. “His life was in danger, and the multiplication of threats, summonses, arrest warrants and even attempts at blackmail and coercion that he has been the victim of demonstrate that the regime has no scruples or limits in its obsession with silencing him and trying to subjugate him,” said opposition leader María Corina Machado, who was disqualified before the elections in which González finally ran as a representative of the unitary platform.
“Faced with this brutal reality, it is necessary for our cause to preserve his freedom, his integrity and his life,” he added in X, where he assumed that on January 10, 2025 he would be officially nominated as a candidate. “Edmundo will fight from outside alongside our diaspora and I will continue to do so here, alongside you,” he added in a message addressed “to Venezuelans.”
But among opponents, there is also disappointment at the candidate’s exile. “It’s a success for them. [los chavistas] “Let’s leave Corina Machado alone,” said the director of the Venezuelan newspaper El Nacional, Miguel Henrique Otero, also exiled in Madrid, in statements to the 24 Hours channel of TVE reported by EFE.
The EU High Representative, Josep Borrell, also regretted the departure of the representative of the United Democratic Platform (PUD). “This is a sad day for democracy in Venezuela,” he said in a statement in which he assured that “in a democracy, no political leader should be forced to seek asylum in another country.”
“The EU insists that the Venezuelan authorities put an end to the repression, arbitrary arrests and harassment against members of the opposition and civil society and release all political prisoners,” reads the statement in which the head of European diplomacy emphasizes that González “appears to be the winner of the presidential elections, by a large majority, according to copies of the electoral registers accessible to the public.
The EU, which does not recognize the election results, is pressuring Venezuela’s government to release all the records, but has not officially assumed that the opposition won.
There have also been reactions in domestic politics, while the government rejoices that the intermediation has managed to avoid the probable imprisonment of the opposition candidate, the Popular Party has accused the executive of Sánchez and Zapatero himself, whom it accuses of “suppressing a problem” for Maduro.
Podemos MEP Irene Montero also attacked the government through a message in X in which she accuses the Spanish government of legitimizing the most coup-prone extreme right in Latin America. “To do this, we already had the PP,” Montero said.
