As Madrid seeks to take a leading role in the international response to the Venezuelan crisis, the fallout from it has fed into Spain’s deep political divide, with the left-wing government and right-wing opposition taking contrasting positions.
Spain’s Socialist prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, has been the most outspoken European Union leader in criticising the US’s removal of Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro, warning, in its initial aftermath that the move “violates international legality and pushes the [Latin American] region towards a horizon of uncertainty and warmongering”.
More recently, in Paris, as he met with the leaders of other countries allied with Ukraine, he described the US initiative as “a very dangerous precedent, reminding us of attacks in the past, and which throws us into a world of uncertainty”.
Spain was one of six co-signatories – alongside Brazil, Mexico, Uruguay, Chile and Colombia – of a statement issued on Sunday expressing “deep worry and rejection” of actions which had violated “fundamental principles of international law”.
Venezuela’s turmoil has become a prominent political issue in Spain in recent years, in great part because of close economic and cultural links between the two countries.
Tens of thousands of Spaniards migrated to Venezuela in the mid-20th century. The children and grandchildren of many of those migrants are among the Venezuelans who have moved to Spain in recent years to escape economic and social instability. There are now around 600,000 Venezuelans living in Spain.
Demonstrators against US capture of Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro and wife Cilia Flores protest in Malaga. Photograph: Jorge Guerrero/Getty
Direct ties between the Venezuelan government and the far-left Podemos party, which was the junior partner in coalition with Sánchez’s Socialists until 2023, brought the South American country’s politics into sharp focus for many Spaniards.
Such connections have been at the root of longstanding attacks by the political right on Sánchez and his Socialists, who were frequently accused of indulging Maduro’s administration and even of collusion with it. The Socialist former prime minister, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, who has been involved in efforts to mediate between Caracas and the international community, has been a particular target.
One still-mysterious episode, in 2020, provided the opposition with further ammunition. An aircraft carrying the then-vice-president of Venezuela, Delcy Rodríguez, made a stop in Madrid, even though she was barred from setting foot in Europe due to EU sanctions. José Luis Ábalos, the Spanish transport minister at the time, received her although details of the meeting remain shrouded in rumour.
The leader of the conservative People’s Party (PP), the main Spanish opposition, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, celebrated the ousting of the Venezuelan president, saying “an evil has been defeated”. However, he also accused the Sánchez government of “renouncing its diplomatic trump cards and its moral leadership and [failing to] face up to the tyranny of Maduro”.
The PP and the far-right Vox have maintained a close relationship with the Venezuelan opposition, including the candidate in last year’s presidential election, Edmundo González, who is in exile in Spain, and the Nobel Peace Prize winner, María Corina Machado.
However, US president Donald Trump’s determination to sideline both González and Machado and instead allow Venezuela’s vice president Delcy Rodríguez to take office has made this an unexpectedly delicate foreign policy issue for the PP and Vox. “The future is not Delcy,” Núñez Feijóo wrote on social media, as he called for elections to be held.
Meanwhile, the Venezuela crisis, and concerns about Greenland, offer Sánchez the opportunity to take a bold anti-Trump stance, providing him respite from a series of scandals at home.
His staunch support for the Palestinian people in the face of Israel’s bombing of Gaza drew a fierce response from Tel Aviv but underlined his status as the EU’s most prominent left-wing leader and gave him kudos among his voter base. Sánchez’s refusal to agree to Trump’s Nato targets for defence spending had a similar effect.