Colombians in Spain prefer Cepeda, while De la Espriella receives enthusiastic support from Vox

Eduardo González The ruling party candidate in the Colombian presidential elections, the leftist Iván Cepeda, has won among Colombian voters residing in Spain, unlike the results in Colombia itself. Meanwhile, the far-right candidate, Abelardo de la Espriella, winner in the first round, has received enthusiastic support from the leader of Vox, Santiago Abascal. Nationwide, with 100% of the polling stations reporting, Abelardo de la Espriella, the candidate of the Defenders of the Homeland movement, obtained 43.74% of the vote (10,361,499 votes) in the first round of the elections, held this Sunday, May 31. In second place was Iván Cepeda, candidate of the Historical Pact, with 40.90% of the votes (9,688,361 votes). There are only 673,138 votes separating the two candidates, which will force them into a runoff election, scheduled for June 21. De la Espriella comes from the private sector and based his campaign on defending conservative ideas and private enterprise. Senator Cepeda, a member of the Historical Pact (the coalition that allowed Gustavo Petro to become the first left-wing president in Colombian history), is the son of Manuel Cepeda Vargas, a senator and historical leader of the Colombian left who was assassinated in 1994 by paramilitaries. In Spain, with a 41.44 percent turnout (127,637 votes cast out of a total of 307,996 registered voters), Iván Cependa won with 54,162 votes, or 42.57 percent, followed by Abelardo de la Espriella with 51,858 votes, or 40.76 percent, according to data from the Colombian National Civil Registry. So far, the first reaction in Spain to the results of the first round of the Colombian presidential election has come from the far-right Vox party, whose president, Santiago Abascal, congratulated De la Espriella via social media. “Congratulations, my friend Abelardo de la Espriella, on your great victory in the first round of the presidential elections in Colombia,” he wrote. “Colombians have in the firmness and courage of the tiger a historic opportunity for their nation to recover the freedom, prosperity and sovereignty that have been taken from them,” he added in a message on the X network, in which Abascal can be seen next to the Colombian candidate, who addresses the camera making the military salute.

Related Content

History of ‘Scarface’, a Nazi high command in Franco's Spain

Peter Paul Rubens: spy and ambassador just for the love of art

British Cemetery in Madrid: the final resting place for “heretic” diplomats

Rubén Darío, Nicaragua’s Ambassador to the Spain of Alfonso XIII

History of Piotr Potemkin and the first Russian embassy in Spanish history