The support of Alberto Nunez Feijóo to the political and military intervention of the United States in Venezuela, is it a reflection, according to analysts, with their best intentions, of the absence of a foreign policy vision of the leader of the PP? Come on, would it be the result of a programmatic hole in the PP?
The foreign policy of Feijóo has consisted of supporting the Government of Javier Miley In Argentina, since his victory, a president who has managed to survive in the last legislative elections in October 2024 thanks to the campaign of Trumpwhich promised financial aid of 20 billion dollars if people voted for him. Trump he got it and mercy He is still in the Casa Rosada.
And now, also in Latin America, Feijóo has supported the “liberation” of Venezuela as a result of the political and military intervention of the Administration Trump. An intervention that has meant, at least so far, inaugurating a Madurism without Maduro with the appointment of Delcy Rodríguez as president.
Of course it’s not what they expected Feijóo, José María Aznar and the PP, namely, that the Nobel Prize Marina Corina Machado triumphantly entered one of the 150 helicopters that flew over different cities in Venezuela in the early hours of Saturday, January 3.
But Trumppragmatic, had already agreed on the succession of Maduro for after the kidnapping: Delcy Rodriguez.
Feijóo he believed himself on the verge of making profitable political propaganda in favor of Machado when nothing less than Trump and his secretary of state, Marco Rubiothey took the trophy from him. And they disqualified Machado for lacking respect and political support.
There is a common point between what happened to the then president Aznar and to the PP Government, in April 2002, and what has happened to Feijóo and the PP in the opposition in 2026.
Aznareager to sign up for the apparent victory of the coup against Chavez He was in the first line of support for the president George W. Bush to foreign support for the internal coup d’état in Venezuela on April 11, 2002. On November 23, 2004, Miguel Angel Cortesthen Secretary of State for Cooperation with Latin America of the Government of Aznarexplained to me: “The ambassador Manuel Viturro He followed the instructions that we transmitted to him from Madrid and together with the United States ambassador in Caracas he went to meet with the new provisional president Carlos Carmona on April 13, 2002. Both expressed the desire that the situation be resolved with democratic normalization and there would be a cessation of violence.”
Cortés was very transparent in that conversation: “I myself had five or six conversations on April 12 with the undersecretary for the Western Hemisphere at the State Department, Otto Reich, in which we prepared a joint United States-Spain declaration on the situation,” he recalled Cortés. According to that statement “the governments of the United States and Spain, within the framework of the reinforced political dialogue, follow the events that are developing in Venezuela with great interest and concern, and in continuous contact.” “The two governments express their desire that the exceptional situation that Venezuela is experiencing lead in the shortest possible time to full democratic normalization and serve to achieve a national consensus and the guarantee of fundamental rights and freedoms; they urge the OAS to help Venezuela in consolidating its democratic institutions.”
The diagnosis they made Otto Reichin Washington, and Miguel Angel Cortesin Madrid, “in constant continuous contact,” as the text says, started from the fact that the coup d’état had been completed. Therefore, both avoided any condemnation of the riot, taking for granted the opening of a new situation. The president Chavez He was first kidnapped at the Fuerte Tiuna base and later “held” on the island of Orchila, 160 kilometers from Caracas.
Neither Foreign Affairs in Madrid nor the embassy in Caracas condemned the coup d’état and emphasized, instead, the democratic pressure on the new president, emerging from the coup. But, what’s more, on April 12, 2002, the Spanish Government, which held the rotating presidency of the European Union, issued a statement according to which the EU trusts that the “Provisional Government” – until then it was the “civil-military junta” – “will respect democratic values and institutions with the aim of overcoming the current crisis within a framework of national harmony and fully respecting fundamental rights and freedoms.”
And, on the afternoon of April 12, Aznar spoke on the phone with the coup president Carmona. The Venezuelan politician Eduardo Fernandezwith whom I spoke on December 1, 2004, explained to me how the communication occurred: “I was speaking from a mobile phone. The communication was cut off several times. The secretary of Aznar He made me call the phone. And then, Aznar spoke with Carmona“.
Fernández He was president of the Ibero-American Popular Foundation, linked to FAES – the foundation of the Popular Party – since 1993, and later vice president of the Christian Democracy. Fernández He told me that, after learning on the night of April 11, 2002, that the president Chavez had resigned, he went to the Miraflores palace, seat of the presidency. There, upon learning more details about the crisis, he decided to call José María Aznarof whom he considers himself a friend, and who proposed his appointment as president of the Ibero-American Popular Foundation. “I thought I should talk to Aznarand I informed him of the situation. That happened around nine or ten in the morning on April 12. I called the Moncloa palace. The gentleman’s secretary assisted me Aznar and shortly after he got on the phone. I explained to him that Chavez He had submitted his resignation. “He told me that the crisis had to be resolved with democratic methods,” he said. Fernández.
The testimony of Fernández allows us to deduce that in those hours of April 12, 2002, Carmona He wasn’t even a “de facto authority.” He was the civilian head of the military coup whose aspiration, as later happened, was to seize power and be sworn in as “provisional president” of a civil-military junta.
This January 2026, Feijóo He signed up for US intervention in Venezuela in the hope that, along with the fall of Madurothe luck of Pedro Sánchez and José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero I was lying down.
And it failed. resoundingly.
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