( Spanish) – The National Assembly of Venezuela controlled by Chavismo approved this Tuesday an agreement to ask President Nicolás Maduro to break diplomatic, consular and commercial relations with the Kingdom of Spain, in retaliation for the decision of the Congress of Deputies, although with the vote in against the ruling Spanish Socialist Workers Party, to recognize opposition leader Edmundo González Urrutia as the winner of the controversial Venezuelan elections on July 28.
The agreement was presented to the plenary session by deputy Pedro Infante, from the ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV), and was approved by a show of hands after being supported by the president of the legislative body, Jorge Rodríguez, a man close to Maduro.
“Patience has a limit and we have been patient, and the specific, precise limit of patience is that in which exceeding those limits implies affecting our sovereignty and our independence,” Rodríguez said moments before the vote.
In a personal capacity, Rodríguez had already asked the Parliament’s Foreign Policy Commission in mid-September to draft a resolution to ask Maduro to break relations with Spain, amid questions from that country’s political opposition to the decision of the National Electoral Council of Venezuela (CNE) to proclaim Maduro the winner of the elections without the electoral records broken down by voting station having been published so far, a decision that was ratified by the Electoral Chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice.
The Senate of Spain also endorsed an agreement in that sense, but the President of the Spanish Government, Pedro Sánchez, has said that his position remains firm in the sense of calling for Venezuela to publish the minutes and seeking to mediate between the ruling party and the opposition before of the beginning of the new government period in the South American country, scheduled for January 10.
Last week, during a forum in Spain, where he requested political asylum in early September, González said he would return to his country by then to take office as president.
González arrived on Spanish soil after living underground for weeks, first in the Netherlands embassy and then in the residence of the Spanish ambassador in Caracas. According to the majority opposition and international observers, such as the Carter Center, González won by a wide margin in the elections on July 28.
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