(This article was written by Hermann Tertsch and appeared in El Debate. María Corina and the Barcelona Coven)
This visit to Madrid by María Corina Machado, Nobel Peace Prize laureate and foremost representative of the struggle for freedom in Venezuela, is a fortunate coincidence, coming just as Barcelona hosts the grotesque coven of autocrats, criminals, and narco-socialist thugs convened by Pedro Sánchez. It is fortunate because it does much to help the world understand the gravity of the anti-democratic perversion that drives the head of a Spanish government who is increasingly revealing himself, ever more clearly, as the symbiosis of totalitarian socialist demagoguery and organized crime.
Pedro Sánchez revealed yesterday that, as yet another great favor—beyond Plus Ultra, beyond the hydrocarbon deals with PDVSA, and beyond turning Spain into a sanctuary for the chavista mafia—he had invited María Corina to the Moncloa in order to use a photograph of the two of them to put an end to the support she enjoys from President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Machado made clear yesterday in Madrid that she did not consider such a meeting appropriate. It was too crude a trap.
What a magnificent gift it would have been for the drug trafficker, torturer, and murderer Delcy Rodríguez, who, in order to save herself, has placed herself at the service of Washington—but whose time must soon come to an end, because the overwhelming majority of Venezuelans, the democratic interests of the region, and the national security interests of the United States all demand it.
María Corina has received medals from the City of Madrid and from the Community of Madrid. It is a shame that the mayor who honored her yesterday did the same for the despicable Gustavo Petro. But that is what comes of expediency. Everyone in Congress applauded Petro except Vox. Now he is in Barcelona threatening María Corina and protecting all the narco-socialists. Enthusiasm for María Corina began very late within the PP. Welcome all the same. They have improved a great deal. Before, they had gone so far as to support Zapatero, of all people, as a “mediator” in Venezuela.
Venezuela is in a transition, and everyone understands that Trump, with so many fronts open, does not want to have to send soldiers into the country to protect María Corina and the democratic forces from the murderers who still hold the monopoly on weapons. But everyone should understand, as the Nobel laureate affirms, that in order to achieve a stable and prosperous Venezuela, the criminal regime must be prevented from entrenching itself. The priority now is a timetable for María Corina’s return to Venezuela and for elections.
Because the danger of backsliding is real, as Peruvians have seen clearly these past days with the massive fraud in the elections that the communist forces have managed to perpetrate—always with the help of Cuban and Venezuelan agents. The Ibero-American continent is brimming with hope thanks to Javier Milei, José Antonio Kast, Santiago Peña, Asfura, and other democratic, anti-socialist leaders. The thirst for freedom and truth is working miracles, and the electoral victory of María Corina, embodied in the figure of Edmundo González, was one of the greatest ever. But evil does not rest. And whoever lowers their guard will suddenly find themselves under the boot of narco-socialism—as is happening little by little to Spain—or will never be rid of it.
In tremendous contrast with the serenity with which María Corina Machado spreads her message of hope and her call for firmness in the defense of truth and freedom, the Barcelona coven is appalling for the sordidness of its protagonists.
The worst of Ibero-America has come to see its friend, partner, and accomplice.
As if reveling in confirming what the UCO reports are revealing about the immense criminal networks of the socialists, Sánchez brings as his principal guests a convicted thieving Brazilian president who imprisons the opposition, a fraudulent Colombian president who is a former narco-terrorist and depraved to the point of nausea, and a Mexican president installed by the grace of the cartels who does nothing but insult Spain. The worst of Ibero-America has come to see its friend, partner, and accomplice.
Sánchez’s Barcelona meeting with Lula da Silva, Gustavo Petro, Claudia Sheinbaum, and an entire array of sinister figures of the radical left is, in reality, nothing other than a summit of the São Paulo Forum—the political representatives and rulers of what, more than governing political forces, are organized crime cartels flying an ideological flag. This is what amounts to the political solution for the future that Sánchez is designing for Spain.
The first thing heard from the so-called “progressive” Barcelona summit was the threats against María Corina Machado uttered by Gustavo Petro. As the latter rightly said yesterday at the Disenso Foundation, following her long meeting with the president of Vox, Santiago Abascal, there is no other way to understand Petro’s assertion that Machado’s return to Venezuela would cause many deaths.
That Sánchez’s friends want to kill her is true. That the Spanish government does everything possible to protect and perpetuate the murderous, drug-trafficking regime that survives despite U.S. control is also true. But the fact that, from Spain, the friends of the head of government speak about Venezuela the way they do tells us not only of the dangers stalking the heroine María Corina. It also tells us of the dangers facing all Spaniards.
Hermann Tertsch is a Distinguished Fellow at the Gold Institute for International Strategy, a Washington D.C. based foreign policy and defense think tank.
