“We all know what China is, a country that is not exactly democratic, but it never occurs to us to say publicly that it is a dictatorship. Well, the same thing happens with Venezuela,” says a member of the party. Government.
He refers to the fact that the Minister of Defense, Marguerite Robleswill assure on Thursday night that Venezuela is a dictatorship. Sources from Moncloa regret what they consider a “misstep” on the part of the minister, due to the inappropriateness of her remarks, for having addressed an issue that does not fall within her competence and because it served Nicolás Maduro to confront the Spanish government.
According to the government’s reading, Maduro is in a complicated decision and surrounded by the international community, and that is why he took advantage of Robles’ words to fulfill the maxim that nothing unites more than an external enemy, in this case Spain.
The rest of the ministers met this Friday the slogan to not start calling the Maduro regimeto defuse the conflict and not interfere in the government’s diplomatic efforts. Only Robles deviated from the script and no one else uttered the word “dictatorship.”
Officially and publicly, the government’s strategy is to tone down, not confront Maduro and not give him ammunition to increase tensions with Venezuela.
This is why there will be no response to the temporary withdrawal of the Venezuelan ambassador to Spain, while waiting for the tension to decrease.
Role of interlocutor
The government considers that there will ultimately be no reprisals against Spanish companies operating in Venezuela, most of them linked to telecommunications and oil. Executive sources understand that Venezuela would have more to lose.
The strategy of Pedro Sanchez There remains a need to maintain discreet efforts to avoid clashes in Venezuela, seeking a diplomatic solution after Maduro’s electoral fraud and before he resumes his presidency in January.
This is why the government trusts in the efforts of countries such as Brazil, Mexico, Colombia or Chile and, this time, it aligns its decisions with what the European Union is doing. All this to try to maintain a position of interlocutor with Venezuela in this process.
This position was slightly affected by the words of Margarita Robles and the decision of Nicolas Maduro.
In the government, we remember a previous similar episode, when the vice-president Yolanda Diaz He assured that Morocco is a dictatorship. At that time, Sánchez had reoriented his foreign policy to get closer to Rabat.
The government openly criticizes the PP’s position, which, as it explains, does not help Venezuela. They add that actions such as the asylum granted in Spain to the opponent Edmundo Gonzalez They broke up the party Alberto Nuñez Feijoo and revealed the image that the PP intends to give of Sánchez as a protector or partner of Maduro.
