“Communism or freedom”: Venezuela, the right wing’s weapon for the Madrid regional elections

Venezuela has been one of the throwing weapons used during the electoral campaign for the regional elections of Madrid of next day 4, very marked by controversy, with the sending of threatening letters to politicians and harsh messages between candidates who have presented a strongly polarized panorama between the positions of the right and the left.

With mottos withor “communism or freedom”, chosen to face the electoral contest by the candidate of the Conservative Popular Party (PP) and current regional president of Madrid, Isabel Diaz Ayuso, the situation of Venezuela It has sneaked into the speeches of the candidates to lead the Executive of the region, among which is the leftist leader Pablo Iglesias, that he left his post as second vice president of the Spanish Government to attend the elections.

In the political environment there is the feeling that the increasingly numerous Venezuelan community residing in Madrid, many of them as a consequence of the situation in the Caribbean country with the management of Nicolas Maduro, will have a lot to say in the Madrid elections and specifically in the results obtained by the right wing.

“Venezuelans in Madrid we are friends of everything that means democracy and if that is on the right, then it will be ”, Leopoldo López Gil, MEP for the Popular Party, told EFE, who, however, considers that his compatriots are “very open people” who are willing to understand “that the center is where good judgment that respects the rule of law should be. and the welfare of the people”.

More than being allied with the right wing, the Venezuelan community in the Spanish capital is “Above all, an ally of freedom, justice and particularly democracy. She is allergic to everything that smells of injustice, to what was called the socialism of the XXI century and that ends up being something close to communism ”, López Gil remarked.

Therefore, he added, “It is clear that the choice between freedom and communism can be simplified, because communism means anti-freedom. All that smells of communism is the suppression of freedom.

MADRID AS CARACAS

“This is not a question of being with the right, with the left, with the center-left or with the extreme right. What is involved here is to make a demarcation with the populism that engenders misery and misery “The former mayor of Caracas Antonio Ledezma, who has lived in the Spanish capital since 2017, told EFE after circumventing the Venezuelan Justice that had kept him under house arrest since 2015.

“It would be sinful for someone on the left, who defends his ideology, regardless of whether it is correct or not, to shoulder a grotesque such as the regime of Venezuela. To endorse that regime on the pretext that it is from the left is to confuse the left with drug trafficking and international terrorism ”, Indian.

As a former mayor of a large capital, Ledezma does not want to see Madrid turned into another Caracas: “I do not want the subway to end up being like the one there, or to see the people of Madrid looking for water in the rivers, or for the hospitals to collapse, or for it to become a criminal area”, stressed.

THE LATIN AMERICAN VOTE IN MADRID

According to data from the National Institute of Statistics, in Spain 62,825 Venezuelans reside, constituting the first Latin American community in the country.

On Madrid there are the vast majority, some 59,000, many with the possibility of exercising their right to vote in regional elections.

This is the case of Rebeca, who left her country after Hugo Chávez came to power and who considers that, in general, in Spain there is “a total rejection of the right-wing current and too much liking for the socialist left”, a tendency that the Venezuelan frame in the recent past of the country, marked by the Franco dictatorship that lasted 40 years.

“However, in countries like mine, under the concept of socialist politics, something as bad or worse has happened than what they lived here, which in my opinion implies that every extreme brings with it excesses that destroy democracies”, he points out to EFE.

But not all migrants arriving from countries with governments of that profile see it that way. Belén, a young Spanish woman born in Cuba, assures that “coming from where I come”, she will vote for left-wing parties to join.

Jessica, a Colombian, will vote for a change, “it is needed” after 25 uninterrupted years of Popular Party governments. “It is like a thread, they are always the same who govern.”

According to the latest surveys, the Popular Party He would achieve victory, although he would have to count on the extreme right of Vox to govern.

The parties of the left, represented by the Podemos formation of Pablo Iglesias, Más Madrid and the Socialist Party would not achieve the necessary sum, according to the polls.