This Sunday, Pedro Sánchez sent a letter to congratulate the PSOE members on the New Year, hit in recent months by cases of corruption and sexual harassment within the party. In the letter, in the face of judicial and parliamentary obstacles, Sánchez once again commits to finishing the legislature and asks his people for “conviction,” “heads held high,” “courage” and “determination” to face the attacks and difficulties. In the letter, released a day after, by order of US President Donald Trump, the Chief Executive also alludes to the US attack and raises the tone by condemning a “violation of international legality in Venezuela” by Washington.
This Saturday, after the bombings in Caracas, the Government through a statement released by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the morning. Already in the afternoon, Sánchez went a step further and assured through the social network X that Spain will not recognize “an intervention that violates international law.” And, this Sunday, the president has reaffirmed himself emphatically in the letter sent to the socialist militancy: “The recent violation of international legality in Venezuela, an act that we strongly condemn, as well as the suffering of the people of Ukraine and Palestine, remind us how important it is to have a Government in Spain that advocates and defends, whenever and wherever, international law and the peaceful resolution of conflicts.”
The conflict represents a new battle between socialists and popular ones. to La Moncloa and has attacked the president for how he refers to the US action in the letter addressed to the militants. “He is against the recovery of democracy,” said the Deputy Secretary of Territorial Policy, Elías Bendodo, at a press conference in Marbella. “The United States is our ally,” the general secretary of the popular parties, Miguel Tellado, had stated early this Sunday in an interview in Esradio.
In parallel, the leader of the PP, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, has issued a statement under the title of Towards full freedom in Venezuela in which he claims that “Venezuela’s horizon has to be based on a democratic electoral process” and claims that “the leadership of the legitimate president Edmundo González and María Corina Machado represents the democratic, peaceful and constitutional path for Venezuela to regain its freedom,” passing .
Feijóo also emphasizes that “the future is not Delcy” Rodríguez, until now vice president of the Andean country, and is the figure who will have to manage Chavismo’s relationship with Trump. According to the White House version, Secretary of State Marco Rubio spoke with Rodríguez and, according to that version, she was willing to “do whatever it takes to make Venezuela great again.” An extreme that Feijóo rejects. “The future of Venezuela cannot be directed by someone who has been Maduro’s right-hand man in recent years. Delcy Rodríguez, accomplice and protagonist of the dictatorship, corruption and looting of Venezuela, represents the darkest past,” adds the PP leader. In his first appearance, Rodríguez asked for Maduro’s immediate release.
Regarding whether or not the attack represents a violation of international legality, Feijóo responds that “respect for the rule of law, including International Law” cannot be claimed by those who “have tolerated, if not enabled and helped, Maduro’s criminal regime.” The popular ones have been accusing the Sánchez Government and former president José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero of collusion with Maduro for some time. The leader of the PP adds in his statement a point that seems to endorse the US attack on Venezuela. “First of all, it was the regime itself that despised the rules-based order by stealing the last elections and ignoring the sovereignty of the Venezuelan people, without forgetting the years of repression, tyranny and plunder. Reversing it is, therefore, essential,” says Feijóo.
Message about the legislature
After a 2025 in which the socialists ended up knocked out with the electoral debacle in Extremadura, and before a new electoral cycle that starts on February 8 in Aragon, the president’s cabinet is preparing new announcements for the coming days with the aim of resuming the agenda. Moncloa is amassing initiatives in housing, but above all it is working on a political clash with the autonomous regions of the Popular Party to avoid another result as disastrous as the one obtained in the Extremaduran polls, where the victory without an absolute majority of the acting president and candidate of the PP, María Guardiola, .
“We know that the PP-VOX coalition and its accomplices will continue to attack the Government with everything they have, even if this means exceeding the limits of truth and democracy,” Sánchez indicates in his letter. “And we know that the far-right international will continue trying to drag Europe into cuts and privatization of the Welfare State, militarization and the weakening of the international order based on rules, towards the end of peace and the implementation of the law of the strongest,” adds the President of the Government. “We will not give up our ideas, our values, even if they are being attacked by a right that whitewashes and imitates the techniques of the ultras. We will not give up what we are,” he adds.
On the opposite side, and they promise their supporters that they will be “forceful” and “propositive” in the year that begins in front of the President of the Government. “He has told the militants that he is going to hold out at all costs. He is trying to take advantage of Christmas to look for a coup d’état, I tell him to forget it,” Bendodo replied. “He endures because he will have a lot to hide,” stated the deputy secretary of the PP.
Criticism from the left
The head of the Executive also does not ignore criticism that has arisen both within his party and in left-wing bloc groups. And he defends himself. “For some time now, the world and particularly the West seem determined to return us to that terrible past from which it took us almost a century to escape. They seem to want to persuade us that the era of peace and progress has already passed, and that now is the time for the retreat dictated by the far-right international with the complicity of the traditional right,” he points out. “In Spain, some progressives have bought into this narrative and have given in to nostalgia and defeat. They say that times have changed. That parliamentary arithmetic is too complex. That the left only has the right to govern with absolute majorities. In short, that we should throw in the towel. I have heard their arguments. I have studied them. And I respect them, although I do not share them. What’s more, I completely reject them. And I do so not because I deny reality, but because I am convinced that the greatest duty of progressives is to face that reality and ensure that Spain continues to advance,” he adds.
