The Venezuelan opposition leader and Nobel Peace Prize laureate, María Corina Machado, will visit Madrid next week with an intense political agenda that includes meetings with the leader of the Popular Party, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, and with the president of Vox, Santiago Abascal.
The meeting with Feijóo will take place on Friday April 17 at the national headquarters of the PP, located on Génova street. During his stay, Machado also plans to meet with the president of the Community of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, and with the mayor of the capital, José Luis Martínez-Almeida, thus consolidating his ties with key leaders in the institutional and autonomous spheres.
The relationship between the Popular Party and the Venezuelan opposition is not new. Last January, during a summit of the European Popular Party held in Zagreb, Feijóo publicly showed his support for Machado, who participated telematically. In that forum, the PP leader defended the “electoral and moral legitimacy” of the opposition to lead the future of Venezuela.
For his part, Santiago Abascal has also shown close alignment with Machado in recent months. Although the exact day of their meeting is not confirmed, the leader of Vox already publicly expressed his support for the opposition figure during his visit to Oslo for the Nobel Prize, highlighting her “courage” and her role as a benchmark in the defense of freedom.
Meanwhile, the Spanish Government does not rule out maintaining contacts with Machado during her stay in Spain. The Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares, has assured that President Pedro Sánchez would be willing to receive her if she so requests, stressing that they have already held conversations on several occasions and that the Venezuelan leader is “free to come to Spain”.
Machado's visit will also coincide with a relevant diplomatic moment, since on the same April 17 the first bilateral summit between Spain and Brazil will be held in Barcelona, chaired by Pedro Sánchez and Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
