The Diplomat
Antonio Ecarri, ‘ambassador’ in Spain of the president-in-charge of Venezuela, Juan Guaidó, has sent a letter to the Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares, in which he expresses his “profound displeasure” at the reception given by himself and senior officials of his department to the deputies Óscar Ronderos and Pedro J. Rojas, members of the National Assembly not recognised by the Spanish government.
In the letter, to which The Diplomat had access, Ecarri points out that, as reported last Monday by the Venezuelan newspaper ‘El Universal’, the two deputies, whom he describes as “Usurpers of the historic Acción Democrática party”, are members of the National Assembly “unknown by the Spanish Government and its Parliament”.
The newspaper pointed out that during their stay in Madrid, Ronderos and Rojas held meetings with Minister Albares; with the Secretary of State for Latin America, Juan Fernández-Trigo; with the Secretary of State for International Cooperation, Pilar Cancela; with the President of the Foreign Affairs Commission of the Congress of Deputies, the Socialist Pau Mari-Klose; and with PSOE parliamentarians, among them the party’s Secretary of Organisation, Santos Cerdán.
Guaidó’s diplomatic representative expresses his surprise at these meetings, recalling that the Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, then headed by Josep Borrell, “was the first European body to ignore the fraudulent presidential elections that took place in Venezuela in 2018, which saw the “re-election” of Nicolás Maduro”. It adds that, consequently, in January 2019, the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, formally announced the recognition of Juan Guaidó Márquez, as president in charge of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela.
It also highlights that in September 202º, the Congress of Deputies of Spain approved a Non-Law Proposition (PNL) which in its first point textually expresses: “Condemns the violations of civil and democratic rights by the Venezuelan regime, such as the one that occurred on June 16, 2020, by the Supreme Court of Justice of Venezuela by supplanting the legal personality of the parties that hold the parliamentary majority in the National Assembly. It therefore urges the return of control of political parties to their legitimate administrators and the cessation of the disqualification and prosecution of political leaders”.
He also stresses that the secretary general of the party that “usurps” the acronym of Acción Democrática, José Bernabé Gutiérrez, was sanctioned by the European Union on 22 February last year, along with other officials of Nicolás Maduro’s regime, for “undermining the electoral rights of the opposition and the democratic functioning of the National Assembly, and for serious violations of human rights and restrictions of fundamental freedoms”.
Ecarri, however, considers that the incident “should not disturb the good relations that the Government of the Kingdom of Spain has so far maintained with the Legitimate Government of Venezuela, presided over by Juan Guaidó Márquez, president of the Legitimate and recognised National Assembly democratically elected in 2015”.
