A row in Spain over the fallout from an election in Venezuela has brought relations between the two main political parties to a low point after the opposition accused the left-wing government of taking part in a coup d’état in the South American country.
Spain’s conservative Popular Party (PP) said the country’s Socialist-led government had helped force a Venezuelan opposition leader, Edmundo González, into exile in the wake of a contentious July election.
Supporters of Mr González say he was the clear winner in the ballot. However, firebrand president Nicolás Maduro declared himself the victor despite widespread international outcry at a lack of electoral transparency.
After going into hiding, in the embassy of the Netherlands and then the residence of the Spanish ambassador, Mr González arrived in Spain earlier this month, requesting asylum. His supporters said his life had been in danger in Venezuela.
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The Spanish government said it would process his request. Meanwhile, defence minister Margarita Robles’s description of the Maduro government as “a dictatorship” drew a fierce diplomatic response from Venezuela.
However, the Venezuelan government has since revealed that while taking refuge in the Spanish ambassador’s residence, Mr González signed a document acknowledging Mr Maduro’s electoral victory. Mr González has said that he signed it under duress and only in order to ensure his safe conduct to Spain.
Esteban González Pons, a spokesman for the PP, accused the Spanish government of being “an accomplice of the regime of Nicolás Maduro in the plan to neuter the democratic opposition” and condemned what he described as the “connivance of Spain in a coup d’état”.
PP leader Alberto Núñez Feijóo called for the resignation of the Spanish ambassador and the foreign minister and said that Spanish diplomacy should not be “at the service of a dictatorial regime”.
Relations between Spain’s two main parties have long been poor, but the use of such language over an international issue has caused them to deteriorate further.
[ Spain and US deny Venezuela’s claims of plot to kill MaduroOpens in new window ]
Foreign minister José Manuel Albares said that the PP was “slandering and publicly damaging Spain”. He also insisted that the Spanish government had no involvement in Mr González’s decision to sign the document in the ambassador’s residence.
Mr González himself confirmed this version of events with a recorded video statement.
“I was not coerced by the Spanish government or the Spanish ambassador in Venezuela,” he said, thanking “the Spanish authorities for their support and commitment to the protection of human rights”.
The Spanish government has resisted demands to acknowledge Mr González as president-elect of Venezuela, calling for electoral results to be made public first. This stance, shared by the EU, has fuelled the Spanish opposition’s claim that Mr Sánchez’s administration is sympathetic to the Maduro regime.
However, Venezuelan authorities recently accused the Spanish intelligence services of being involved in a plot to kill Mr Maduro.
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