The Diplomat in Spain

Nicolás Maduro./ Photo: TD.

The Diplomat. 19/09/2017

The Spanish Embassy in Caracas yesterday presented a verbal note of complaint to the Venezuelan authorities following criticism of Nicolás Maduro to Mariano Rajoy for his management in the illegal consultation of 1-O in Catalonia.

Foreign Minister Alfonso Dastis dismissed Maduro’s words as “unacceptable” at a press conference from New York. “We have sent a verbal note to the Venezuelan Embassy reminding us that relations have to be presided over by mutual respect”, said the head of the Spanish Diplomacy.

Maduro turned, back in the day, into the first international leader to take a photo with the Catalan flag in the middle of the secessionist challenge and, yesterday, into the first one to support the referendum of 1-O. He criticized Rajoy for his attitude facing the illegal referendum in Catalonia and he implied that he acts as a “dictator” for not allowing Catalonians to express themselves through a popular referendum.

“From Venezuela, we ask for respect for the people of Catalonia (…) Who is acting as a dictator? Maduro, who allowed an illegal referendum (plebiscite of the Venezuelan opposition), protected it and gave it freedom. Or Mariano Rajoy, who does not want the people of Catalonia to pronounce?”, wondered the Venezuelan President.

Maduro, who declared that he “does not interfere” in domestic affairs of other countries, suggested that the solution to this “thing” is “dialogue, diplomacy, understanding”, all this connected to the “respect for the people of Catalonia by oligarchic governments”.

“Huge thing that of Catalonia’s issue and the repression ordered against the Catalan people by President Mariano Rajoy (…) I am not going to interfere in these affairs, but one has to see the double moral”, Maduro stated at a public event celebrated in Caracas.