Spanish Prime Minister meets exiled Venezuelan opposition leader González

MADRID – Venezuelan opposition presidential candidate Edmundo González met with Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez on Thursday, four days after he fled to the European country under an agreement negotiated with the government of Nicolás Maduro.

González's flight into exile – after weeks of seeking refuge in the Dutch and Spanish embassies in Caracas – was a severe blow to millions who had placed their hopes in his opposition election campaign.

His supporters in Venezuela and elsewhere, as well as the U.S. government, consider him the legitimate winner of the July 28 presidential election.

Sánchez, who was on a trip to China when González arrived, posted a video of their meeting on social media platform X on Thursday, showing the two walking together through the gardens of the Moncloa Palace in Madrid.

Spain welcomed González as a sign of its “humanitarian commitment and solidarity with the Venezuelans,” Sánchez said in his post.

González also posted on X that he thanked Sánchez for his work “to restore democracy and respect for human rights” in Venezuela and promised that he would “continue the fight to impose the sovereign will of the Venezuelan people.”

On Wednesday, the Spanish parliament approved a motion by the conservative Popular Party calling on Sánchez's left-wing coalition government to recognize the opposition leader as Venezuela's elected president. The motion is non-binding.

The Spanish government supports the European Union's demand that Maduro publish the raw results of the poll before the Union recognizes a winner.

The European Parliament will debate the outcome of the Venezuelan elections on Tuesday in Strasbourg, France.

González's arrival has further strained relations between Madrid and Caracas. On Wednesday, Jorge Rodríguez, president of the Venezuelan National Assembly, called for “the immediate severance of all diplomatic relations and all commercial relations.”

“Let all representatives of the Spanish government delegation go and let us bring our own,” Rodríguez told the assembly, calling for “the immediate cessation of all commercial activities by Spanish companies.”

González, who was Venezuela's ambassador to Argentina during the presidency of the late Hugo Chávez, landed at a military airport near Madrid on Sunday, traveling aboard a Spanish military plane.

After the election, González and the de facto leader of the Venezuelan opposition, María Corina Machado, went into hiding as security forces arrested more than 2,000 people, many of them young Venezuelans, who had spontaneously taken to the streets to protest Maduro's alleged electoral fraud.

By fleeing into exile, González joined the growing ranks of opposition leaders who once fought against Maduro before seeking asylum abroad in the face of a brutal crackdown. In Spain, he joins at least four former presidential candidates who have been jailed or faced arrest for their defiance of Maduro's rule.