The PP is focusing on Venezuela during Sánchez's anti-Trump summit

MadridWhile Pedro Sánchez received Lula da Silva, president of Brazil, with military honors in Barcelona, at the PP headquarters in Madrid an alternative reception with honors was held for the Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado. Dozens of popular affiliates, party officials, other anti-Chavista activists, and Alberto Núñez Feijóo himself gathered at the entrance of the headquarters on Génova street to applaud Machado's arrival. The new Nobel Peace laureate, in full European tour, has allowed herself to be courted by the PP – in the afternoon she also has a meeting with the leader of Vox, Santiago Abascal – while turning her back on the Spanish government, with whom she has preferred not to meet.

Although PP sources deny that the visit has been deliberately timed to coincide with the anti-Trump summit weekend led by Sánchez in the Catalan capital

In statements during the progressive summit with Brazil, Sánchez stressed that he was willing to meet with Machado, but that she "considered it not opportune." The Spanish president insisted that the doors of Moncloa are "open" to the opposition and reiterated his executive's position against "foreign interference," in reference to Donald Trump's attack. Sánchez's stance, erected as the antithesis of the President of the United States, contrasts with the attempt to maintain balance with Trump by both Machado and the PP. From Génova, on the other hand, the anti-Chavista opposition leader defended the "military victory" over Nicolás Maduro's regime at the beginning of the year, with the intervention of the US, and called for "the total liberation of all Venezuelans" and the "dismantling of repressive structures".

Also avoiding confrontation with the US president, Feijóo called for "free elections with an explicit calendar as soon as possible" in Venezuela and the return of Machado, whom Trump disparaged after she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. "Her party in Spain," Feijóo claimed about the opposition leader, is the PP, which tirelessly champions this cause despite the contradictions generated by Trump's forceful intervention in Venezuela and the decision to keep the Chavista Delcy Rodríguez in power, for now. This Friday afternoon, it will be the turn of the mayor of Madrid, the popular José Luis Martínez-Almeida, to honor her with the presentation of the city's golden key.