The meeting takes place in full recomposition in the opposition ranks while Maduro enjoys a growing thaw
MADRID, 28 Ene. (EUROPA PRESS) –
The Minister of Foreign Affairs, European Union and Cooperation, José Manuel Albares, will receive this Sunday a Venezuelan opposition delegation headed by its chief negotiator, Gerardo Blyde, a month after Spain has recovered the figure of its ambassador in Caracas with the argument to be able to help with this the dialogue that the government of Nicolás Maduro and the opposition have resumed.
The meeting will take place at the request of the Venezuelan opposition, according to Albares himself, who in the past has maintained contacts or spoken by phone with other opposition leaders, such as Leopoldo López or former presidential candidate Henrique Capriles.
The minister has also met with his successive Venezuelan counterparts since he took office in July 2021, pending first contact with the new foreign minister, Yvan Gil, recently appointed by Maduro.
This will be the second time that he meets Blyde, with whom he already met on November 11 in Paris. On that occasion, the minister also held a separate meeting with the chief negotiator of the Venezuelan government, Jorge Rodríguez, which was followed by a three-way meeting.
Said contacts preceded a meeting of the two chief negotiators with the French president, Emmanuel Macron, and with the Colombian president, Gustavo Petro, whose country has assumed important mediation work, as well as the president of Argentina, Alberto Fernández, with the that sought to stage support for the resumption of dialogue between Tuesdays.
That dialogue was resumed in Mexico on November 26 and resulted in a first agreement on social protection, under which it is expected to release Venezuelan funds frozen abroad in the framework of the sanctions against the Maduro regime and whose control had the opposition to finance social projects. However, since then there have been no new contacts.
Thus, Albares said this week that Spain is willing to help in whatever may be useful in these talks. “Spain is at the disposal of the Venezuelans for everything that they consider that Spain can be useful to them and it is up to them to decide,” he said, waiting for the parties to transfer a specific request.
The meeting with Blyde could be a good moment to find out what the opposition expects from the Spanish government at this time. The minister has claimed at all times that it is the Venezuelans who have to decide what future they want for their country.
“We support the dialogue between Venezuelans because we believe that the solution for Venezuela can only come through peaceful, democratic channels and through dialogue between Venezuelans,” he said in a recent interview with Europa Press.
The appointment occurs at a time when the political puzzle in Venezuela seems to be recomposing itself. On the one hand, a broad sector of the so-called Unitary Platform -which includes Voluntad Popular, Acción Democrática, Un Nuevo Tiempo and Primero Justicia- decided in early January to dismiss Juan Guaidó as president of the National Assembly elected in the 2015 elections.
By virtue of that position, and given that the bulk of the international community has not recognized the subsequent elections held in Venezuela, Guaidó proclaimed himself interim president of Venezuela in 2019 and was recognized as such by almost fifty countries, including Spain. .
However, the stagnation of the situation in the country and the lack of concrete progress led the National Assembly in 2015 to remove Guaidó from office, after he had also recently lost the support he once enjoyed among others in Europe, with the sole exception of the United States.
This movement, which has revealed cracks in the unity of the Venezuelan opposition with just over a year to go before the 2024 presidential elections, has occurred in parallel to an incipient return to the international scene by Maduro, who has reestablished relations with Colombia. and Brazil after the changes of president in both countries, among others.
After several years in ostracism and subject to sanctions, the regime has seen how the Russian invasion of Ukraine returned interest in Venezuela, the country that has the largest oil reserves in the world.
Thus, the United States has been leading a rapprochement in recent months that has resulted in the release of seven imprisoned Americans, including five Citgo executives, in exchange for two nephews of the Venezuelan first lady, Cilia Flores, imprisoned on US soil. . In addition, Washington has authorized the oil companies Chevron, Repsol and Eni to resume exports from Venezuela.
It was in this climate that the Spanish Government authorized on December 27 the appointment as ambassador in Caracas of the hitherto business manager, Ramón Santos. Spain lowered the level of its representation in Venezuela after the departure of Jesús Silva as ambassador in November 2020 in order to express its discomfort with the political situation in the country.
As a consequence, Venezuela did the same, but this Monday its charge d’affaires, Coromoto Godoy, already presented his style copies abroad, a step prior to presenting his credential letter to the King and being able to officially serve as Venezuelan ambassador. Santos also presented her letters to Maduro a few days ago.
Albares justified the change by saying that Spain “needs to be with a top-level diplomatic figure such as an ambassador in a country where there are also 160,000 Spaniards and Spanish interests of all kinds that have to be defended” and to be able to support the dialogue.
He also recalled that France has always maintained an ambassador in Caracas while Portugal recovered its own a few months ago. However, the EU still maintains a charge d’affaires as its representative in Caracas, although this could change soon. A senior EU official has acknowledged that the political situation in the country is “totally different”.
“We are willing to review the sanctions imposed on the government of Nicolás Maduro if progress is made in the dialogue,” said the head of community diplomacy, Josep Borrell, in December. European sources then stressed that the sanctions were imposed due to the deterioration of democracy in the country and are “reversible or increased depending on the evolution of the situation.”
Within the framework of this thaw, the former Chavista minister Miguel Rodríguez Torres arrived in Spain last Sunday thanks to the “mediation of a humanitarian nature” carried out by former president José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero.
Rodríguez rose in politics at the hands of Hugo Chávez, who entrusted him with heading the Intelligence services. Already with Nicolás Maduro in power, he served as Minister of the Interior, a position from which he was removed. In 2018 he was arrested, allegedly for conspiring against the established regime, for which he has spent almost five years behind bars.
