Edmundo González Urrutia: “My departure from Venezuela is only temporary”

( Spanish) – The Venezuelan opposition leader, Edmundo González, pointed out this Friday within the framework of the La Toja Forum, a space for political debate held in the northwest of Spain, that despite having left Venezuela as a result of “unspeakable pressures and extreme threats” , his “leaving the country is only temporary.”

González Urrutia, who gave his first public speech almost a month after his arrival in Spain, used the occasion to claim himself as the “elected president” of Venezuela and “spokesman” for the Venezuelan diaspora. A role that he assumes, he assures, “in order to drive Spanish solidarity—and, by extension, the rest of Europe—with the Venezuelan democratic cause.”

Taking advantage of the scope of this forum and the presence of relevant political figures such as the president of the Popular Party, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, or the president of the Government of Galicia, Alfonso Rueda, González Urrutia urged Spain and the international community to continue pressing “to “contribute to the purpose of ensuring that in Venezuela the popular sovereignty expressed at the polls on July 28 is fully enforced and respected.”

Before the audience, the opposition leader spoke of the need for Venezuela to recover “lost opportunities” by “rescuing not only our democratic and institutional normality, but the normality of our economic activity.” An objective for which he called on the Ibero-American community to add its support “in energetic and effective terms, so that our country can move back towards institutional normality.”

González Urrutia once again thanked the Spanish Government for helping him face “the most difficult and demanding chapter that I have endured in my personal life,” as well as for giving him the opportunity to express himself “without ties.”

attempts to contact the Venezuelan Foreign Ministry to obtain its comments on these statements.

Given the Venezuelan opposition presidential candidate’s complaints about threats and pressure, the Maduro Government denied on previous occasions that it had coerced him to leave Venezuela. The opposition leader has been in Madrid since September 8 and, as announced by Foreign Minister José Manuel Albares, this week he formally requested political asylum.