The Council of Ministers will grant Spanish nationality to Leopoldo López this Tuesday

Eduardo González The Council of Ministers will grant Spanish nationality by naturalization to Venezuelan opposition leader Leopoldo López this Tuesday, as confirmed this Monday by Foreign Minister José Manuel Albares. “I confirm that Leopoldo López has made this request and that it will be submitted to the Council of Ministers tomorrow (Tuesday),” Albares stated on the program 'El món' on RAC1. “This route (naturalization) has been used because there are some documents that, due to Leopoldo López's very particular situation, he was unable to produce, and therefore, we have decided to use this provision, which is in the Spanish Civil Code and can be used without any problem,” he explained. “I also want to take this opportunity to remind everyone, because there is often misinformation, if not outright insults and slander, directed at the Spanish government regarding Venezuela, that this is the government that not only granted Spanish citizenship to Leopoldo López, but also provided him with refuge and protection in the Spanish Embassy for a year and a half,” he continued. “There are 200,000 Venezuelans who have arrived in Spain with a special status to provide them with protection, and (former opposition presidential candidate) Edmundo González, despite the slanderous claims about pressure being leveled against him at the Spanish Embassy, is now free in Madrid and not imprisoned in Caracas thanks to this government,” he insisted. “Therefore, I want to say to all Spaniards, and very directly to Venezuelan residents here in Spain, that this is the government in the world that has done the most for Venezuelans, and it is the only Spanish government—because the Popular Party government didn't lift a finger for them, no matter how much they beat their chests—that has done everything it could for them, as it will do tomorrow for Leopoldo López,” he concluded. Leopoldo López, born in Caracas 54 years ago, was imprisoned for more than three years in Ramo Verde prison (in the state of Miranda, in the north), accused of inciting the 2014 protests against the government of Nicolás Maduro (who was overthrown on January 3rd after the US military assault on Caracas). In late April 2019, hours after being released from house arrest by sympathetic military officers, he was granted asylum at the Spanish Embassy in Caracas by the then-ambassador, the recently deceased Jesús Silva. López remained in the Embassy for over a year before being transferred to Spain in November 2020. In statements to the newspaper ‘El País’, López asserted on March 25 that he would like to return to Venezuela “as soon as possible” but recalled that the Maduro regime had stripped him of his citizenship, “something that is expressly prohibited by the Venezuelan Constitution.” “Of course I am Venezuelan; identity is not granted by the owner of a bureaucratic process, and there are millions of Venezuelans who do not have access to consular services or the ability to renew their passports in Venezuela,” he warned.

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