The presidential candidate of the Unitary Platform was hidden in the official residence of the Netherlands in Caracas for more than a month, until September 5 when he entered the residence of the Spanish ambassador, from where the agreement was made for him to leave the country, in accordance with the wishes he had expressed, according to the account of the respective European foreign ministers.
Edmundo González Urrutia was secretly kept in the diplomatic residence of the Netherlands from the days after the presidential elections on July 28 and for more than a month, to protect his safety. This was confirmed by the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands, Caspar Veldkamp, in a statement made public by his office, and he also told the House of Representatives of his country, according to public television Nos.
The statement from the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs says: “At the beginning of September, Edmundo González indicated that he wanted to leave the residence and the country. I then spoke with him about the situation in Venezuela, the importance of the opposition’s work and the transition to democracy, and stressed our continued hospitality. He indicated that he wanted to leave and continue his fight from Spain.. The text is signed by Veldkamp.
For his part, the High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs, Josep Borell, regretted “the repression, political persecution and direct threats against his security and freedom” of the opposition candidate, and detailed that González Urrutia received “hospitality at the residence of the Netherlands in Caracas until September 5.”
The Minister of Foreign Affairs, European Union and Cooperation, José Manuel Albares, said on Sunday that Edmundo González was the one who personally requested to go to Spain, although he did not indicate when exactly it was “for security reasons.” According to the Spanish official, it was not something improvised: “We had been preparing for this moment for many days. I spoke to him at one point, when he officially expressed his desire to move to Spain, I spoke to him while he was still in Caracas. I told him that if what he wanted was to come to Spain, of course we would do everything possible, we would provide him with the material means and we would grant him asylum. I also told him that if he preferred to remain in residence, that would be fine too.
The three statements show that Edmundo González left the official residence of the Netherlands to enter the residence of the Spanish ambassador in Caracas on September 5, and finally left with a safe-conduct pass on the night of Saturday, September 7, and boarded a military plane bound for Madrid.
The plane used for that trip, A Falcon 900 of the Spanish Air Force arrived in the Dominican Republic at 12:25 am on Friday, September 6, where it waited until moving to Caracas. This is what it did on Saturday at 7 pm, landing in Maiquetía at 9 pm to take off again an hour later, according to public air traffic records, now with the opposition presidential candidate on board along with his wife Mercedes López and the Secretary of State for Foreign and Global Affairs, Diego Martínez Belío, the Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs has reported.
The route followed by the military plane took the former diplomat from Caracas to Santo Domingo, then flew to the Azores Islands in Portugal and made a stopover before arriving in Madrid, where he was received by the Secretary of State for Ibero-America and the Caribbean and Spanish in the World, Susana Sumelzo, so that the former diplomat could begin the process to receive political asylum.
The Vice President Delcy Rodriguez posted on Instagram that the authorities granted the “opposition citizen” a safe passage to leave the country in an attempt to restore “political peace.” According to him, he left Venezuela after “voluntarily seeking refuge in the Spanish embassy in Caracas several days ago,” Rodríguez said. Tarek William Saab, the attorney general appointed by the constituent assembly, He stated that His office knew “from the first moment” when Edmundo González “entered the embassy of the Kingdom of Spain in Caracas.” He did not indicate the date.
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