Thousands of people gathered this afternoon at the Puerta del Sol in Madrid in response to the call from the Venezuelan opposition in support of their candidate, Edmundo González, on the eve of the inauguration of the new president. Spanish politicians had prominent participation in the event, with a special role from the PP. Its president, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, has asked that González be sworn in because otherwise it would mean a “coup d’état” and a “usurpation of power,” and has asked that “the will of the citizens” prevail “over any type of violence.” . More bellicose, the leader of the Madrid PP, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, added that [Nicolás] Maduro “is finished” and that “all that remains is for the armed forces to take that step forward.” “If you really love Venezuela you have to be consistent and you have to celebrate and hasten the fall of Maduro’s criminal regime now,” he said, in line with Vox.
The square was practically full around 6:30 p.m., if you discount the space separated by fences in the center, reserved for members of the organized opposition to Nicolás Maduro and for the large presence of politicians from the Spanish right, mainly from the PP, including the former presidents José María Aznar and Mariano Rajoy. Outside of that nucleus, the most effective way to distinguish members of the Venezuelan diaspora from Spaniards of origin was to look at who was singing the words of the anthem when some in the audience started with the first verses, “glory to the brave people who the yoke cast.”
Attendees carried numerous banners with messages of support for González and criticism of Maduro, who announced that he will take office tomorrow even though he has not presented the minutes proving the validity of his electoral victory, contrary to what the opposition insistently claims. “The repressive government falsified the vote,” “enough of dictatorship, of repression, of victims” or “Ma(s)duro against Venezuela,” read among these messages. The Spanish political struggle was also the subject of comments, as is usual when it comes to Venezuela: “Zapatero and Sánchez, ass-lickers of Chavismo,” said another poster.
Although the event was scheduled to begin at 6 p.m., it was almost 7 p.m. and only protest songs with a Caribbean rhythm played through the loudspeakers, interspersed with recorded exhortations from opposition leader María Corina Machado urging compatriots around the world to take to the streets today. “Here we are!” said a woman in the audience, adding immediately afterwards: “Long live freedom, damn it, as they say.” [Javier] Milei.” The mention of the Argentine president shows the crossed affinities of the international right, whose Madrid side is openly militant against Maduro and Chavismo, no matter how much Spanish diplomacy calls for prudence in this regard.
Whistles to the PNV, applause to Vox
The rally was presented as an act of democratic demand outside of partisanship and ideologies, but this did not prevent a good round of boos for the PNV senator Luke Uribe-Etxebarria, who thought of saying good afternoon and thanking him for the invitation. in Basque, and which recalled the links between Euskadi and Venezuela and the country’s support for the Basque exiles of Franco’s regime. Santiago Abascal, leader of Vox, was mostly applauded and expressed himself in even more belligerent terms than Ayuso about the political future of the Caribbean country: “The usurper must fall by hook or by crook.”
If Ayuso had mentioned Sánchez without naming him for “being angry with dead dictators while being an accomplice of living dictators,” Feijóo said he repudiated “the proven complicity of the allies and the Spanish Government” in the face of the “regime of terror” in Venezuela and, Taking advantage of the fact that in this matter the PNV agrees, broadly speaking, with the popular ones, he apologized on behalf of the majority of Spaniards. Otherwise, the event took place without incident, although there was a moment of hilarity when the leader of Ciudadanos, Carlos Pérez-Nievas, took the stage to compare the decline of his party with the situation in Venezuela. “We are resisting until the end, like the Venezuelan people,” he reasoned. Among the numerous interventions and the fact that the event began more than an hour late, some realized that María Corina Machado was speaking in Caracas and shouted for her words to be broadcast. The presenter, Goizeder Azúa, excused herself: “We don’t have a screen.”
These statements were made minutes before the arrest of the opposition leader.
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