“We live in a country where democracy is only sought in some places (sic), and in others it is accepted, for ideological, economic and political reasons, that a dictatorship is imposed on a democracy.” This is how Alberto Núñez Feijóo criticized this Monday the alleged collusion of Spain with regimes like that of Venezuela. Last week, the PP leader attacked “a growing rivalry, on the one hand between the West, the free and democratic world, and on the other the Sino-Russian model supported by Iran or North Korea.” And this, a few days after the trip of the Prime Minister to China. A week before, the Andalusian President Juan Manuel Moreno had done so. And Feijóo himself in 2017, when he was head of the Xunta de Galicia.
Feijóo attacked the government of Pedro Sánchez for not informing the PP about the situation of the two Spaniards detained in Venezuela accused of being part of a plot to attack President Nicolas Maduro. “My party and I are following with absolute concern the arrest of two compatriots,” he said in statements to the media at an event at a children’s school in Alicante.
But Feijóo regretted “not being able to say anything more” because “48 hours” after learning of the arrest, “the main party in Spain has no information from the government.” “They have not informed us of the length of their detention or what they are accused of, their personal conditions, the place where they are being held or their living conditions,” he noted.
“The lack of information from the government about the arrest and the negotiations with the Maduro regime to grant asylum to the one who won the elections is regrettable,” he said, referring to opponent Edmundo González, to whom Spain granted political asylum after requesting it himself.
Feijóo did not mention González by name on either of the two occasions he spoke about him. The second was to announce a meeting with him, after having already met Pedro Sánchez and former presidents Mariano Rajoy (Friday) and José María Aznar (this same Monday). “Tomorrow I will receive the one who won the elections in Venezuela. “I will receive him in Congress, where the representation of the sovereignty of our country resides, in the same Chamber that recognized him as president of Venezuela,” he said. “I hope that tomorrow the European Parliament will vote in all conscience to respect the rights of the Venezuelan people acquired in the elections,” he added, referring to the vote that will take place next Thursday.
The defense of democracies
Feijóo has been demanding in recent weeks that Spain recognize González as the elected president of Venezuela, after various international organizations and Latin American countries of different political parties denounced possible fraud in last July’s elections.
For the moment, Spain has not taken the step demanded by the PP, nor has any country in Europe: from those governed by the EPP to the socialists, through the liberals or the extreme right. The EU, as a supranational body, has not recognized Edmundo González as president-elect. Not even the United States has done so.
Feijóo’s phrase about the collusion of democracies with dictatorships for “ideological, economic and political” reasons is complemented by another that he himself made last Friday during a visit to Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis. In Athens, he said: “Europe is probably in the most difficult situation since the Second World War. There is a growing rivalry between the West, the free and democratic world, and on the other the Sino-Russian model supported by Iran or North Korea.”
The day before, Pedro Sánchez had just returned from an official trip to China. But this year, the Prime Minister is not the only one visiting the Asian country. The President of the Junta de Andalucía, Juan Manuel Moreno, visited China a few days before Sánchez. The Andalusian leader boasted of having made commitments for industrial investments in his region worth 2.5 billion euros.
But Feijóo himself went to China on an official trip as president of the Xunta de Galicia. It was in 2017 and his agenda was filled with meetings with Chinese businessmen with the aim of negotiating investments in the autonomous community he led at the time.
