<h6><strong>Eduardo González</strong></h6> <h4><strong>The Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares, met yesterday with the Venezuelan opposition candidate Edmundo González Urrutia, with whom he spoke about “democracy, freedom and dialogue in Venezuela.” The meeting took place on the eve of a vote in the Senate on Wednesday on a PP motion to recognise the candidate of the Democratic Unitary Platform (PUD) as “legitimate president”.</strong></h4> “I have had an excellent conversation with Edmundo González Urrutia in which we have exchanged views on the current moment and democracy, freedom and dialogue in Venezuela,” the minister declared through his official account on the social network X. Edmundo González was also received yesterday by the leader of the People’s Party, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, in the Congress of Deputies. During the meeting with “the president-elect of Venezuela”, according to Feijóo on social networks, the PP leader assured him that his party will continue to demand in all national and international forums the recognition of the result of the presidential elections in Venezuela. In fact, the meeting took place one day before <strong>the Senate votes on a motion by the People’s Party </strong>- which has an absolute majority in the Chamber - for the Government to recognise Edmundo González as "the new president of Venezuela, in view of the results of the elections of 28 July". The vote will take place a week after the Congress of Deputies approved a non-legislative proposal by the PP in the same sense, which was approved thanks to the support of the PNV and was rejected by the PSOE MPs. Meanwhile, Albares intervened yesterday in the Upper House to answer a question from the PP senator Alicia García in which she urged the minister to speak out on whether Venezuela is "a dictatorship as her cabinet colleague Margarita Robles and the High Representative of the European Union", Josep Borrell, have claimed. “Venezuela is an authoritarian dictatorial regime that has kidnapped two Spaniards to blackmail Spain by using them as hostages” and that has led “the winner of the polls, Edmundo González, to asylum,” García said during the debate. “Why are they so afraid of upsetting Maduro? What debt do they have with the dictator? What is it that weighs so heavily on the silence?” she added. In his response, Albares replied that, “if they are so concerned about whether Venezuela is a dictatorship or not, why did Mariano Rajoy and his foreign ministers never say so? It was exactly the same government and the same country.” “If they are so concerned about whether a dictatorship is or not, why don’t they call Franco’s dictatorship a dictatorship and repeal the laws of Democratic Memory in the Balearic Islands and Valencia?” he continued. In response to the PP's "words", the minister recalled that the Government has welcomed more than 120,000 Venezuelans, including the opposition members Leopoldo López and Edmundo González, compared to the 50 of the previous PP Executive. He also asked the PP to show "responsibility for the Venezuelan people, for our citizens and the Spanish companies that are in Venezuela, also for those who are unjustly detained and their families." "Support Venezuela, do not rely on Venezuela for petty politics," he added. Later, Albares declared before journalists in the corridors of the Senate that, if the Government "had done what the PP says, Edmundo would not be free in Madrid but detained in Caracas at this moment." <h5><strong>Albares speaks with his counterpart about the two detainees</strong></h5> In the same statements to the press, the minister reported that yesterday he had spoken by telephone with <strong>his Venezuelan counterpart, Yván Gil, to demand, “as the Vienna Convention requires,” that he confirm both the identity and the location of the two Spanish citizens</strong> arrested in the framework of an alleged operation to abort a plot to destabilize Venezuela and assassinate President Nicolás Maduro. This is the first contact at the governmental level after the Venezuelan authorities announced this past Sunday the arrest of the Bilbao natives José María Basoa Valdovinos and Andrés Martínez Adasme. “At this time we still have no confirmation of the identity, the location or the charges against the two detained Spaniards,” warned Albares. The minister also assured that both the General Directorate of Consulates and the Spanish consulate in Caracas are “in continuous contact” with the families of the two detainees and that he had warned the Venezuelan foreign minister that Spain, “of course,” will provide diplomatic and consular protection to the detainees. Albares also assured his counterpart that the Minister of Defense, Margarita Robles, has confirmed that the two detained Spaniards have no ties to any public body, “and much less the CNI,” the National Intelligence Center, as the Venezuelan government had assured. The minister yesterday summoned the chargé d'affaires of the Venezuelan Embassy in Madrid to the Foreign Office to convey the same requests. Meanwhile, President <strong>Nicolás Maduro</strong> declared yesterday that the two Spanish “terrorists” had traveled to Venezuela to do “a new type of tourism: adventure tourism. They come to plant bombs and kill people here. Explosive tourism.” He also stated, during his appearance on the program ‘Con Maduro+’, that “those captured are convicted and confessed” and that the “evidence” shown in public is not “even ten percent of the full evidence that is already in the hands of the justice organs.” “The hegemonic media of the Spanish right have tried to victimize the murderers, the terrorists, the victimizers,” he continued. “Now it turns out that they were good boys, tourists who were out for a walk and who were captured by the Venezuelan dictatorship and disappeared,” he concluded.
