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The Spanish Government has qualified this Saturday that former President José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero made his trip to the capital of Venezuela, Caracas, as a private citizen to hold a meeting with Venezuelan leaders who had no relationship with the official Spanish policy.
Zapatero was received this Friday by the president of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, and the vice president of the country, Delcy Rodríguez, amid the controversy over the meeting held by the Spanish Minister of Transportation, José Luis Ábalos, with the Venezuelan vice president at the airport from Madrid Barajas. That event caused discomfort in the US Government, which said it had questions about the matter.
"The former president of the Government, Mr. Rodríguez Zapatero, has traveled to Venezuela strictly as a private citizen," said the Spanish Foreign Ministry, "without holding any representative office and without any mandate from the Government of Spain."
Since 2016, Zapatero exercised mediation work that resulted in the release of some political prisoners, but ended up failing in 2018 because the majority of the opposition perceived Spanish as a figure too shameful towards the Maduro regime.
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