Some 4,000 people, according to the Urban Guard, gathered this Thursday in Barcelona’s Sant Jaume Square to demand that the Venezuelan opposition candidate Edmundo González, who went into exile to Spain after the July 2024 elections, be sworn in as president of Venezuela.
This protest occurs the day before the current president of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, takes office again, and with the unknown of whether the opposition leader will return to the country for the inauguration, since he has announced that this Thursday he traveled to Panama.
The rally began around 6:00 p.m., under the motto ‘Glory to the Bravo People’, and attendees shouted slogans such as ‘Until the end’, ‘Freedom’, ‘Maduro, concha tu madre’ and ‘Long live Venezuela Libre’, They have waved Venezuelan and Catalan flags and unfurled a giant Venezuelan flag.
Election results
The organizers have argued that “the official records compiled by opposition witnesses in all electoral centers in Venezuela” give the victory to González.
Specifically, they have assured that the opposition leader obtained 67% of the votes, while Maduro had 30%, according to their data, and they have explained that the objective of this mobilization is to support “all Venezuelans who will be in the streets of the country, raising our voices until the electoral results are respected.
At the event, they also thanked the presence of the leader of the PP in the Barcelona City Council, Dani Sirera, and the deputy of the PP in the Parliament, Hugo Manchón; of the socialist deputy in the Catalan Chamber Ernesto Carrión; of Vox’s spokesperson in Parliament, Joan Garriga, and of Vox’s leader in Barcelona City Council, Gonzalo de Oro.
“1,794 political prisoners”
The protest also demanded the release of “1,794 Venezuelan political prisoners” and that their human rights be respected, and ended with the singing of the Venezuelan national anthem.
The spokesperson for the NGO ‘A world without a gag’, organizer of the rally, Gerali Rodríguez, has assured that she has “the conviction and hope that democracy will return to Venezuela with the swearing-in of Edmundo González as president of the republic.” “this Friday.
He has asked the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, to be “on the side of democracy and the votes of Venezuelans”, after the central Executive has announced that it will not send any representative to Maduro’s inauguration.
“The incidence of Zapatero”
Rodríguez has regretted that there is no clear position on the part of the Sánchez Government, and has added: “We all know the impact of Zapatero in Venezuela, trying to whitewash the Maduro dictatorship before international public opinion”, in reference to the former president of the Government of Spain, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero.
Venezuela held presidential elections at the end of July in which the ruling party gave victory to Maduro, although the opposition has claimed its victory and has demanded that the authorities present the minutes that would support the president’s re-election.
Furthermore, the mayor of Barcelona, Jaume Collboni, received this Thursday a delegation of representatives of the Venezuelan community of Barcelona and people from the ‘ConVZLA’ collective, which brings together members of civil society and the main opposition parties, and gave them conveyed the city’s support in “defense of democracy” and human rights.
