The photo of the infamous extortion of Delcy Rodriguez to Edmundo Gonzalez at the Spanish embassy he left a striking detail: the informal clothing of the Spanish ambassador Ramon Santoshardly appropriate for a career diplomat. Santos appears from behind in the photo wearing a white wrinkled linen guayabera with a hood. Santos’s careless, almost-at-home appearance further enhances the burden of opprobrium in that photo. Santos has already been denounced for alleged crimes of threats and coercion, despite the fact that González Urrutia has denied having been coerced by the Government of Pedro Sánchez.
«Given the various versions that circulate regarding an alleged coercion exercised by officials of the Spanish State, including Ambassador Ramón Santos, towards me, I wish to categorically clarify the following: I have not been coerced either by the Government of Spain or by the Spanish ambassador to Venezuela, Ramón Santos. The diplomatic efforts carried out had the sole purpose of facilitating my departure from the country, without exerting any type of pressure on me,” González says in a statement issued this Thursday.
«The Spanish Government undertook to guarantee my safety during the trip to the Spanish Armed Forces plane, as well as on my arrival in Spain, as it happened. The main purpose of these measures was to allow the continuity of the processing of my asylum application before the Spanish State, under conditions of security and respect for my rights. I want to emphasize that these efforts were supervised and facilitated directly by the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Spain, José Manuel Albares, ensuring at all times my well-being and freedom of decision. With this statement, I hope to clarify any doubts or misunderstandings regarding the nature of my transfer and reiterate my gratitude to the Spanish authorities for their support and commitment to the protection of human rights,” he concludes.
The Spanish Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares, urged this Thursday the leader of the Popular Party, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, to “immediately disavow” the “slander” of the Deputy Secretary of Institutional Affairs of the PP, Esteban González Pons, about the Government of Spain for his role in the departure from Venezuela of the opposition leader, Edmundo González Urrutía. “I demand that Mr. Feijóo disavow the MEP who has slandered Spain and accuses Spain of things that are absurd but tremendously insulting to our country,” Albares told the press after attending a meeting in Brussels to try to advance a agreement on Gibraltar after Brexit.
González Pons said this Thursday that the Government of Spain is involved “as a necessary cooperator” in the “coup d’état that has occurred in Venezuela” and pointed out former president José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero as the “great plotter” of the “operation.” Pons stated this Thursday in an interview on EsRadio that González was sheltered in the Netherlands Embassy and that “he was transferred to the residence of the Spanish ambassador so that blackmail and coercion were possible.” According to the PP leader, the Government “is complicit in the operation of turning Maduro into a dictator for longer” and acts as a “necessary collaborator” in the “dictator’s” maneuver to “decapitate Venezuela’s democratic opposition.”
