<h6><strong>Eduardo González</strong></h6> <h4><strong>The president of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, has received the credentials of the new Spanish ambassador, Álvaro Albacete, before whom he defended the strengthening of bilateral relations between the two countries.</strong></h4> The event took place on December 23 at the Miraflores Palace, seat of the Venezuelan Presidency, according to the website of the Maduro Government. During the event, the president stressed the importance of “strengthening bilateral relations between Venezuela and Spain” and highlighted the “desire of both countries to promote dialogue and cooperation in various areas,” including the economy, culture and politics. “This meeting marks a new chapter in diplomatic relations between Venezuela and Spain, with the hope that closer ties will be consolidated in the future,” declared the Bolivarian Executive. Maduro was accompanied at this meeting by his wife (“the first combatant”), parliamentarian Cilia Flores; the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Yván Gil; the Minister Counselor of the Embassy of Spain, Ricardo Santos Alfonso, and the Deputy Consul of the Embassy of Spain, José del Palacio Tamarit. Álvaro Albacete – until then Director of the Cabinet of the Minister of Culture, Ernest Urtasun – was elected ambassador to Venezuela by the Council of Ministers at the beginning of December, replacing Ramón Santos, who is about to reach the mandatory retirement age for diplomats. This is “a completely normal change,” declared the Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares, to the press. “The ambassador we have appointed is an ambassador with enormous experience in very different scenarios, multilaterally and bilaterally, both abroad and also with high positions in Spain, and who offered us all the guarantees so that the interests of Spain, which is what is important, are perfectly protected in Caracas,” he concluded. With his appointment, Albares has managed to close the appointment of a new ambassador in Caracas before January 10, the day on which the transfer of power in the country should take place. Maduro Maduro was declared the winner in the presidential elections on July 28 against the opposition candidate Edmundo González Urrutia amid alleged irregularities denounced by the opposition. Several South American states have refused to recognize the results and some have even suspended diplomatic relations with the government in Caracas. The electoral records published by the opposition give González Urrutia the victory in the elections, but the National Electoral Council (CNE) officially proclaimed Maduro's victory. In these circumstances, the two chambers of the Spanish Parliament, the Congress and the Senate, approved in mid-September, on the initiative of the PP and with the vote against the PSOE, two non-legislative proposals in which the Government was urged to recognize González Urrutia as "president-elect" of Venezuela. Around the same time, Yván Gil called his ambassador in Madrid, Gladys Gutiérrez, for consultations and summoned Ramón Santos in response to the “insolent, interventionist and rude” statements of the Spanish Minister of Defense, Margarita Robles, who referred to the Government of Nicolás Maduro as a “dictatorship.” During his meeting with Santos, Gil warned him that Caracas would not accept “any interventionist action on the part of the Government of Spain.” To date, the Spanish Government has insisted on demanding the publication of the minutes as a condition for recognizing the election results and has chosen (like most of the 27 States of the EU and the Ibero-American community) not to recognize, for the moment, González as “president-elect.” On September 8, Edmundo González Urrutia fled his country after an arrest warrant was issued against him and was transferred from Caracas by a Spanish Air Force plane to Madrid, where he requested political asylum. On December 20, Foreign Minister José Manuel Albares announced in Congress that the government had already granted political asylum to Edmundo González Urrutia, with whom he had just had “a very cordial working breakfast,” but he did not specify whether the breakfast had addressed the Venezuelan leader’s desire to return to his country to be sworn in as president on January 10.
