<h6><strong>Eduardo González</strong></h6> <h4><strong>The Spanish Government has decided not to send any kind of representation to the inauguration of Nicolás Maduro as president of Venezuela, which will take place this coming Friday in Caracas, according to sources from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.</strong></h4> With this decision, Spain would join the agreement reached unofficially by the 27 EU States so that none of them will be present at the event, considering that democratic legitimacy cannot be given to Maduro's victory in the presidential elections of last July 28, taking into account that no verifiable results have been presented through the delivery of the official minutes and that the observation missions sent by the Carter Foundation and by the United Nations (both at the invitation of the Venezuelan regime) do not allow the current president's victory to be ratified. Although the agreement between the 27 (proposed by Spain) is not official, and therefore it is not certain that all the States will comply with the commitment not to attend the investiture ceremony, the same sources consider that Spain should not contribute to legitimizing the act by attending the ceremony. <h5><strong>Edmundo González</strong></h5> Meanwhile, the opposition candidate Edmundo González Urrutia, who enjoys political asylum in Spain, denounced this Wednesday, through his account on the social network X, that his son-in-law, Rafael Tudares, has been “kidnapped” in Caracas by “hooded men, dressed in black”, who “put him in a gold-colored van, license plate AA54E2C and took him away. At this time he is missing.” Edmundo González is on tour through several countries in America to obtain the support of their respective governments in his attempt to travel to Venezuela before January 10 to assume the Presidency of Venezuela himself. On that day, Maduro intends to be sworn in for another six-year term and the government has deployed 1,200 security agents in the days leading up to the inauguration to stop the opposition's plans. Venezuela's National Assembly, which is majority pro-government, declared nine former Latin American presidents who intend to accompany González in Venezuela personae non gratae on Wednesday and asked that they be treated as a "foreign force trying to invade" the country. Edmundo González has political asylum status in Spain. However, if he is detained upon arrival in Venezuela, the only option for the Spanish government would be to condemn this incident and defend the physical integrity and the right to protest and express himself for the opposition leader, since, although political asylum gives him a wide range of movements to leave and enter our country, it does not grant him any legal advantage in this type of situation. Furthermore, in the more than foreseeable case that Maduro ends up assuming office, the EU could respond by approving new sanctions against the regime. Spain already tried to push forward a proposal in this regard during the meeting of the Foreign Affairs Council last September, but it did not go ahead due to the reluctance of some Member States. What is quite clear to the Spanish Government, whoever is president from 10 January, is that the Embassy in Caracas must remain open, not only because of the need to maintain dialogue with the Venezuelan authorities in favour of the interests of the 350,000 Spanish residents and the companies based in the country (with special attention to Repsol), but also to protect the opposition to the regime. In this regard, sources from the Ministry have recalled that both Edmundo González and another prominent opposition leader, Leopoldo López, went to the Spanish Embassy to ask for protection. The current Spanish ambassador in Caracas is Álvaro Albacete, appointed at the beginning of December to replace Ramón Santos, who is about to reach the mandatory retirement age for diplomats.
