Opposition Leader Leaves Venezuela, Granted Political Asylum by Spain

The vice president of Venezuela said on Sept. 7 that opposition leader Edmundo González Urrutia has left the country after being granted political asylum in Spain.
González went into hiding days after the contested results of Venezuela’s July election were announced on July 28 by the government-controlled National Electoral Council (NEC), which declared President Nicolás Maduro the winner with 52 percent support, but without releasing detailed voting data.
González had failed to appear three times in connection to the criminal electoral sabotage investigation.
“After taking refuge voluntarily at the Spanish Embassy in Caracas a few days ago, [González] asked the Spanish government for political asylum,” she said, originally in Spanish, on Instagram. She added that González’s request to leave the county had been granted by the government.
González’s lawyer Jose Vicente Haro also confirmed the opposition leader’s departure.
“Spain is committed to the political rights and physical integrity of all Venezuelans,” Foreign Minister José Manuel Albares said in a statement.
Experts from the U.N. and the Carter Center, which at the invitation of Maduro’s government observed the election, determined that the results announced by electoral authorities lacked credibility.
In a statement critical of the election, the U.N. experts stopped short of validating the opposition’s claim to victory, but they said the voting records it published online appeared to exhibit all of the original security features.
The United States, the European Union, and several other countries—including in Latin America—have refused to recognize Maduro as the winner of the election without Caracas publishing a breakdown of the election results.
Tally sheets have long been used for reporting election results in Venezuela. In previous presidential elections, the NEC published online the results of each of the more than 30,000 voting machines, but the Maduro-controlled panel did not release any data this time, blaming an alleged cyberattack mounted by its opponents in north Macedonia.
Since Venezuela’s last election, which was not recognized as free and fair by many international observers and countries, Rodríguez has been sanctioned by several countries and entities—including the United States, the European Union, and Canada—over her involvement in human rights abuses and corruption, and for undermining democracy and the rule of law in Venezuela.