If having the moral high ground also secured the upper hand in politics, Edmundo González would have launched in Madrid a global tour touting the odds-defying Venezuelan transition that was kick-started by his landslide victory in the 28 July election.
A lively diaspora swollen in sync with the oil-rich nation’s descent into socialist dystopia, Madrid is also a hobnob venue for right-of-center leaders from across Ibero-America, vying with Miami for the title of Hispanic freedom mecca. This, in spite of the ocean’s distance from which Spain leverages, on the EU’s diplomatic behalf, its cultural ties to the continent. Madrid’s role as a beacon seems also to be unaffected by the country’s enabling role, under socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, in the wider region’s Bolivarian firmament of left-wing struggle.
The Brussels-based bloc, for its part, often displays in Latin America its failures to live up to its humanitarian aura, proving woefully unable to leverage its trade and normative clout in support of hounded dissidents like González. European institutions were only called upon to recognize his claim to be Venezuela’s rightful premier by a parliamentary resolution led in Strasbourg, on September 19, by national-conservative votes, shortly after a slim majority in Spain’s lower house acted likewise (with a similarly frustrating delay). But with Joe Biden’s recognition of his victory unlikely to be reneged on by Kamala Harris if elected, González likely would have inclined towards Europe—and not Washington—to begin casting Nicolás Maduro’s downfall as a telltale warning for autocrats worldwide.
Instead, González landed in an airbase to Madrid’s east two Sundays ago—four months sooner than hoped—ferried by Spain to file an asylum claim that suddenly alters what were already uncertain horizons for a peaceful transition. His ballot-box triumph against one of the world’s bloodiest tyrants is now even unlikelier to culminate in a swearing-in ceremony in Caracas on January 10th. All but ensuring Maduro’s sham re-enthronement that day, González’s exile is a paralyzing setback for the opposition figures trapped inside the country, and confounds those beyond Venezuela who are looking for ways to help the fight.
Four months back, González was a 75-year-old enjoying a peaceful retirement from a low-key diplomatic career. Yet Spain’s overture grants asylum to the best hope Venezuela had to see Maduro yield without some form of foreign interference sparking large-scale civic conflict. When González was picked to replace María Corina Machado, whom the regime’s electoral commissars barred from running in April, the strongman felt emboldened. He snubbed the innocence of a rival he saw as frail and whose choice to flee could now be similarly faulted for lack of courage. Venezuelan politics is starkly reliant on personalities, with political capital hardly transferable among leaders of varying strength. Yet González went on to trounce Maduro on July 28, trebling his votes, and taking on a mantle of legitimacy built up over 25 years of struggle.
In a counter-rigging operation fit for the annals of anti-authoritarian politics—and of electoral integrity, as concerns of fraud spike in democracies, too—activists at polls dutifully and secretly collected 83.5% of the voting records (actas), much as the regime itself had done in 2023 to ‘substantiate’ its fraud against Henrique Capriles. Upon refusing to concede the validity of a second bogus opinion issued by the crony-packed High Court, the usual frame-up ensued: González was indicted with usurping electoral functions, forgery, disobedience, conspiracy, and sabotage. As he disobeyed three subpoenas issued by Tarek Saab, Maduro’s fearsome prosecutor, the regime ratcheted up repression nationwide beyond the imaginable. It jailed teens, killed 37 people, and doled out ‘terrorism’ indictments to hundreds more.
When the regime finally issued a search warrant to prod González out of hiding, it also sent secret police to encircle and cut off the lights at the Argentinian legation in Caracas, where a cadre of his campaign’s closest advisors had hidden for months, following Javier Milei’s open war against Maduro. Moving from the Dutch embassy, González, who had previously pledged to remain in Venezuela, took Spain’s offer and landed in Madrid on the following day.
In fairness, the move sowed division when the opposition most needed to unite. It even seemed to restart a frustrating cycle last seen under the previous interim—and ultimately ineffectual—government-in-exile headed by Juan Guaidó in 2019-2023. Why didn’t González choose a country where diplomats wouldn’t control his efforts to challenge the fraud? Worse still, why had he taken up the mission at all—and why did Corina choose him, or allow him to be chosen, over a stronger-willed leader? The opposition seemed to have long understood that isolated victories won’t prevail over Chavismo, and that its leaders needed to use this last landslide to kick into higher gear, to install another kind of strategy. González’s flight seemed to nip those hopes in the bud. The let-down was aggravated by suspicion of financial spoils in the deal around González’s exile that would see him retire in much better conditions than he enjoyed in the trenches.
That sense largely faded on 18 September, with photos leaked of the regime’s top apparatchiks, siblings Jorge and Delcy Rodríguez—speaker of the sham legislature and Maduro’s vice-president, respectively—chasing down González at the Spanish ambassador’s residence. González alleged in a video address that they had threatened him into signing a document validating Maduro’s fraud. The only commitment he got in exchange for agreeing to flee is one which resonates with every Venezuelan in exile with family still in the country: he secured the safety of his family and his property (one apartment and a car).
Beyond former Spanish Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, Maduro’s blood-laundering worldwide lobbyist, the role in the operation of his socialist heir in the role, current PM Pedro Sánchez, is undeniable. Only in tandem could they have managed both to extend the offer and force Edmundo’s hand to accept it. Only thus could they have persuaded the more hardline wing of Maduro’s regime to accept letting the Spanish ‘rescue’ plane land in Caracas, claiming that they were providing a haven to the opposition, when instead they’ve rid Maduro of the most perilous challenge to his rule. Incidentally, Zapatero works at the intersection of lobbying and air control, having likely mediated when the EU-sanctioned Delcy Rodríguez came to launder luggage loads of money through Madrid’s airport tarmacs in early 2020.
This Madrid-Caracas axis has likely ensured that González won’t be inaugurated in January, but the next step in their roadmap is to have the opposition durably at odds with itself, paralyzed, and angry with its leadership. Maduro will be sure to make this a win for his plan to cubanize Venezuela, while strong-arming the opposition into the impression that Spain is on their side, and not his. However adverse the situation in the country—and however marginally better for a poor, old man to continue the fight from Madrid—Maduro’s thugs can’t be afforded that luxury.
Venezuela’s Rightful Leaders Haven’t Said Their Last Word
Venezuelan opposition presidential candidate Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia waves a Venezuelan flag during a demonstration after a call for global protests against the results of the disputed election in Venezuela, on September 28, 2024 in Madrid. (Photo by JAVIER SORIANO / AFP)
If having the moral high ground also secured the upper hand in politics, Edmundo González would have launched in Madrid a global tour touting the odds-defying Venezuelan transition that was kick-started by his landslide victory in the 28 July election.
A lively diaspora swollen in sync with the oil-rich nation’s descent into socialist dystopia, Madrid is also a hobnob venue for right-of-center leaders from across Ibero-America, vying with Miami for the title of Hispanic freedom mecca. This, in spite of the ocean’s distance from which Spain leverages, on the EU’s diplomatic behalf, its cultural ties to the continent. Madrid’s role as a beacon seems also to be unaffected by the country’s enabling role, under socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, in the wider region’s Bolivarian firmament of left-wing struggle.
The Brussels-based bloc, for its part, often displays in Latin America its failures to live up to its humanitarian aura, proving woefully unable to leverage its trade and normative clout in support of hounded dissidents like González. European institutions were only called upon to recognize his claim to be Venezuela’s rightful premier by a parliamentary resolution led in Strasbourg, on September 19, by national-conservative votes, shortly after a slim majority in Spain’s lower house acted likewise (with a similarly frustrating delay). But with Joe Biden’s recognition of his victory unlikely to be reneged on by Kamala Harris if elected, González likely would have inclined towards Europe—and not Washington—to begin casting Nicolás Maduro’s downfall as a telltale warning for autocrats worldwide.
Instead, González landed in an airbase to Madrid’s east two Sundays ago—four months sooner than hoped—ferried by Spain to file an asylum claim that suddenly alters what were already uncertain horizons for a peaceful transition. His ballot-box triumph against one of the world’s bloodiest tyrants is now even unlikelier to culminate in a swearing-in ceremony in Caracas on January 10th. All but ensuring Maduro’s sham re-enthronement that day, González’s exile is a paralyzing setback for the opposition figures trapped inside the country, and confounds those beyond Venezuela who are looking for ways to help the fight.
Four months back, González was a 75-year-old enjoying a peaceful retirement from a low-key diplomatic career. Yet Spain’s overture grants asylum to the best hope Venezuela had to see Maduro yield without some form of foreign interference sparking large-scale civic conflict. When González was picked to replace María Corina Machado, whom the regime’s electoral commissars barred from running in April, the strongman felt emboldened. He snubbed the innocence of a rival he saw as frail and whose choice to flee could now be similarly faulted for lack of courage. Venezuelan politics is starkly reliant on personalities, with political capital hardly transferable among leaders of varying strength. Yet González went on to trounce Maduro on July 28, trebling his votes, and taking on a mantle of legitimacy built up over 25 years of struggle.
In a counter-rigging operation fit for the annals of anti-authoritarian politics—and of electoral integrity, as concerns of fraud spike in democracies, too—activists at polls dutifully and secretly collected 83.5% of the voting records (actas), much as the regime itself had done in 2023 to ‘substantiate’ its fraud against Henrique Capriles. Upon refusing to concede the validity of a second bogus opinion issued by the crony-packed High Court, the usual frame-up ensued: González was indicted with usurping electoral functions, forgery, disobedience, conspiracy, and sabotage. As he disobeyed three subpoenas issued by Tarek Saab, Maduro’s fearsome prosecutor, the regime ratcheted up repression nationwide beyond the imaginable. It jailed teens, killed 37 people, and doled out ‘terrorism’ indictments to hundreds more.
When the regime finally issued a search warrant to prod González out of hiding, it also sent secret police to encircle and cut off the lights at the Argentinian legation in Caracas, where a cadre of his campaign’s closest advisors had hidden for months, following Javier Milei’s open war against Maduro. Moving from the Dutch embassy, González, who had previously pledged to remain in Venezuela, took Spain’s offer and landed in Madrid on the following day.
In fairness, the move sowed division when the opposition most needed to unite. It even seemed to restart a frustrating cycle last seen under the previous interim—and ultimately ineffectual—government-in-exile headed by Juan Guaidó in 2019-2023. Why didn’t González choose a country where diplomats wouldn’t control his efforts to challenge the fraud? Worse still, why had he taken up the mission at all—and why did Corina choose him, or allow him to be chosen, over a stronger-willed leader? The opposition seemed to have long understood that isolated victories won’t prevail over Chavismo, and that its leaders needed to use this last landslide to kick into higher gear, to install another kind of strategy. González’s flight seemed to nip those hopes in the bud. The let-down was aggravated by suspicion of financial spoils in the deal around González’s exile that would see him retire in much better conditions than he enjoyed in the trenches.
That sense largely faded on 18 September, with photos leaked of the regime’s top apparatchiks, siblings Jorge and Delcy Rodríguez—speaker of the sham legislature and Maduro’s vice-president, respectively—chasing down González at the Spanish ambassador’s residence. González alleged in a video address that they had threatened him into signing a document validating Maduro’s fraud. The only commitment he got in exchange for agreeing to flee is one which resonates with every Venezuelan in exile with family still in the country: he secured the safety of his family and his property (one apartment and a car).
Beyond former Spanish Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, Maduro’s blood-laundering worldwide lobbyist, the role in the operation of his socialist heir in the role, current PM Pedro Sánchez, is undeniable. Only in tandem could they have managed both to extend the offer and force Edmundo’s hand to accept it. Only thus could they have persuaded the more hardline wing of Maduro’s regime to accept letting the Spanish ‘rescue’ plane land in Caracas, claiming that they were providing a haven to the opposition, when instead they’ve rid Maduro of the most perilous challenge to his rule. Incidentally, Zapatero works at the intersection of lobbying and air control, having likely mediated when the EU-sanctioned Delcy Rodríguez came to launder luggage loads of money through Madrid’s airport tarmacs in early 2020.
This Madrid-Caracas axis has likely ensured that González won’t be inaugurated in January, but the next step in their roadmap is to have the opposition durably at odds with itself, paralyzed, and angry with its leadership. Maduro will be sure to make this a win for his plan to cubanize Venezuela, while strong-arming the opposition into the impression that Spain is on their side, and not his. However adverse the situation in the country—and however marginally better for a poor, old man to continue the fight from Madrid—Maduro’s thugs can’t be afforded that luxury.
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