Thousands of people filled Puerta del Sol in Madrid this Thursday in solidarity with the Venezuelan people and the marches called in Caracas by the opposition leader María Corina Machado. In the center of the Spanish capital, in a rally supported by the leadership of the PP and Vox, the protesters have demanded “freedom” in Venezuela and to oust Nicolás Maduro – whom they define as a “dictator” – to give way to a change in the South American country led by Edmundo González Urrutia. “The time has come for the liberation of Venezuela,” proclaimed the leader of the PP, Alberto Núñez Feijóo.
This Thursday, Machado called on Venezuelans to a large demonstration in Caracas to claim that the opposition was the winner of last July’s elections. The opposition leader has then come out of hiding —although she was arrested shortly after— in which she had spent months preparing for what they claim will be González’s return to Venezuela to try to take possession.
After Machado’s call to all Venezuelans to take to the streets, Puerta del Sol has also hosted a large concentration shouting “out with the dictator”in reference to Maduro, and the most chanted slogan: “freedom.” “Today the people are demonstrating against repression. We know that it is not an easy task. We hope that there is awareness and that they hear the voice of the people. Tomorrow it may be Maduro, but for a few hours because the people are going to demonstrate,” he said. said in statements to 20 minutes the coordinator of the Unitary Venezuelan Platform in Spain.
The protesters inaugurated the rally, which began at six in the afternoon, singing “Glory to the brave people” and, at the end, they released colored balloons. “You can see it, you can feel it, Edmundo president,” they cheered. On the banners, the word most used by the hundreds of people gathered was “justice”, although phrases such as “Repressive government falsified vote”, “Maduro out of Venezuela”, “Maduro murderer” or “on January 10, Edmundo president”.
The proclamations have continued with “damn Maduro” and “we are not afraid” when the protesters who were still in Sol after eight thirty in the afternoon learned that the regime authorities had detained María Corina Machado in Caracas.
Apart from Feijóo, this protest in Madrid was attended by the president of the Community of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso; the mayor of the capital, José Luis Martínez-Almeida; as well as the former presidents of the Government José María Aznar and Mariano Rajoy. Also the leader of Vox, Santiago Abascal. All of them have supported opposition leaders in exile, such as Lilian Tintori, and also Carolina González, the daughter of the opposition leaderwho has not been able to hold back his tears for the situation in which his father finds himself.
One of the first to speak was the Madrid president, one of the most applauded. He has told all Venezuelans fighting against the Maduro regime that “all of Spain” is with them. “They have been persecuted, but to those thugs we say: we are not afraid of you. And to these heroes of freedom we say that they are not alone. It’s finished, Mr. Maduro!“, he proclaimed amid shouts from the protesters.
According to Ayuso, now “the only thing missing is for the Venezuelan Armed Forces to take that step forward” because the country “deserves institutions that are up to par, an independent and free justice system.” And so, he has demanded that the Government of Pedro Sánchez “live up to the task and do the same as other former presidents such as González, Rajoy and Aznar.” “You have to decide whether you are with freedom or dictatorship. You cannot be brave with dead dictators and complicit with living dictators“, he added.
Precisely, Feijóo has noted that in the Puerta del Sol “Zapatero and Sánchez are missing”a statement that made the square explode with whistles and boos. From the speakers’ gallery, he emphasized that “there are moments in history when we have to take sides” as the PP has done for the Venezuelan opposition and that it “saddens him not to be able to say the same about the president of Spain.”
For the leader of the PP, Edmundo González “he must take office” this Friday “because his compatriots decided so in elections and this has been proven at the polls.” In his opinion, “Any other scenario means a coup d’état and fraud. against the will of a people.”
Santiago Abascal has also spoken out, defending that González “must assume the presidency” of Venezuela because “it is the majority will of an entire people.” And he has called on all Venezuelans to say “enough” to Maduro’s “criminal dictatorship”: “The usurper has to fall by hook or by crook”.
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