The United States charged the deposed Venezuelan president, Nicolás Maduro, this Thursday with torture and repression. Thus, the American justice system is expanding the charges against the former Venezuelan leader, who remains imprisoned in New York accused of "narcoterrorism". The investigation into Maduro's alleged link to drug trafficking was the pretext that Washington used to escalate pressure against Venezuela and capture its top leader.

Last December, Donald Trump and Elon Musk met at the White House. It was yet another meeting between the American president and the billionaire owner of Tesla and SpaceX, but in this case, there was a bizarre moment. During the time they shared, Trump asked the artificial intelligence chatbot Grok, developed by Musk's team, how Venezuelans would react to an eventual capture of their president, Nicolás Maduro. A few weeks later, on January 3rd, the United States launched an attack in which they kidnapped the Venezuelan leader.

On June 27, just three days after a double earthquake devastated Venezuela, causing more than 6,500 deaths, a plane from the United States landed in Caracas. Traveling on it was a businessman with Venezuelan and Italian nationality who had taken off from the luxurious and exclusive island of Palm Beach, in the American state of Florida. The trip was repeated, at least, one more time, on July 22. The country was immersed in the search for the missing and subsequently in the reconstruction after the deadliest earthquake –by far– in its recent history, but the motive for the main passenger's visit had nothing to do with humanitarian efforts.

New York, the city where, 263 days later, Nicolás Maduro remains detained, is the setting in which Delcy Rodríguez and Donald Trump held a meeting this Tuesday on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly. It is the first encounter between a Venezuelan president and a US president in eleven years, and represents one more step –especially symbolic– in the resumption of relations between the two countries. The parade of leaders and officials from the Trump administration through Caracas has been a constant since Washington's military aggression in January, but it is the first time that the person primarily responsible for that operation has met directly with the person who forcibly opened the doors of Venezuela to him to plunder its natural resources.

The Municipal Group of Compromís in Castelló declares that it will request explanations from the municipal government of the PP and Vox, led by Begoña Carrasco, "regarding the situation of the humanitarian aid collected in Castelló for the people affected by the earthquakes in Venezuela".

The president of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, who was captured in a US military operation in January, has published the first images from a New York prison, where he awaits trial, on his social networks, and has assured that he is "firm". Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, are imprisoned in a Brooklyn jail accused of drug trafficking and possession of firearms, charges that both deny.

Donald Trump is in great need of good news to sell to his electorate, and this Friday he finally has one. "The US has just closed a deal with Venezuela: the largest oil deal in world history," the president wrote on his social network, euphoric about a deal that gives the United States majority control of the more than 65 billion barrels of oil that are estimated to be part of Venezuela's reserves. The agreement, announced by Donald Trump and confirmed by Delcy Rodríguez, will allow the US to double its oil reserves.

Venezuela is the paradigm of theoretically rich South American states subjected to historical political disjunctions between left-wing spaces, which, wrapped in the flags of revolution, promise and do not deliver, and right-wing spaces abducted by the rules of maximum profit that promise and also do not deliver, between the defense of identity —they call it patriotism— and selling to the highest bidder. Today's Venezuela is Venezuela between, on the one hand, the inoperable and incapable Chavista dictatorship sold to the American mafia by the executors of the utopia and, on the other hand, the siren songs of an opposition led by a candidate who trusted the same gang mafioso that doesn't even let her return to her country.

For two years I dreamed of the day I would return to Maiquetía, home to Venezuela's main international airport. I spent those years practically in exile. Like many other Venezuelans living abroad, I stopped visiting my country when President Nicolás Maduro intensified his repression against critics and human rights defenders, like myself, after he fraudulently came to the presidency in the 2024 elections.

Rescue teams have freed Hernán Gil alive, a 47-year-old man who had been trapped for almost a week under the rubble of a collapsed building in La Guaira, Venezuela, following the two earthquakes that shook the country last week. More than a hundred operatives participated in an international operation led by Chilean firefighters that lasted nearly 72 hours.

Rescue teams continue to work against the clock in the areas most affected by the double earthquake that shook Venezuela, with the hope of finding survivors becoming increasingly limited. Four days after the tremors, the toll is dramatic: 1,450 dead, 3,150 injured, and thousands missing.

"We have a central and essential objective: to save lives." A few hours after the double earthquake that shook northwestern Venezuela on Wednesday afternoon, Decly Rodríguez addressed the population in a video message surrounded by a dozen senior officials. The interim president tried to make the administration's work visible by showing an image of unity, and asked Venezuelans for the same: "United we will overcome this tragedy." At the most critical moment for Chavismo, practically co-opted by the intervention of the United States, the tragedy has added even more pressure to Delcy Rodríguez's government. But if the executive knows – and can – manage the response well, it can still have a card in its favor in a future negotiation for a political transition in the country.

Venezuela has just suffered two devastating earthquakes that have exposed, if that were even possible, the inability of a bankrupt state to face the harsh reality. The earthquake has stripped bare organizational miseries and exponentially accentuated the torn seams of a country that was not working and that is now literally – physically and psychologically – in pieces.

The scale of the tragedy in Venezuela is worsening by the hour. The images of destruction that captured the attention of the whole world on Thursday have given way this Friday to concern about the rising death toll. The day began with 235 deaths and by the end of the day the toll had risen to over 900. Mid-afternoon another piece of data set off alarm bells: the UN warned that there could be up to 50,000 missing from the double earthquake. Regarding citizens of Spanish nationality, to date, 5 deaths, 106 missing persons have been counted and 14 people have been located buried under the rubble.

In an earthquake, poverty kills more than the tremor itself. An earth tremor of the same intensity will kill far fewer people in Japan than in Venezuela. Construction techniques and the preparation of the population and emergency teams in developed countries act as a shield. That we have to spend billions on weapons and not on protecting people from natural disasters (and here I directly include the effects of climate change, which are affecting Europe more intensely every day) is an insult to humanity and its collective intelligence.

This Wednesday two earthquakes of great magnitude have caused chaos in Venezuela and have caused hundreds of injuries and an indeterminate number of deaths: 164 have been confirmed, but this number is expected to increase very considerably, given the proportions of the tragedy. The tremors, of magnitude 7.2 and 7.5, have collapsed thousands of buildings in the country, buried people under rubble and caused damage to major infrastructure. Citizens have published videos on social networks showing moments of panic, desperation and terror moments after the catastrophe.

"I was entering the house and I received a notification on my mobile warning of an earthquake. We immediately started to feel the shaking. Glasses began to fall from the cupboards and books from the shelves and we quickly went down to the street. When it seemed to be over, a second tremor shook everything again, even stronger. It was very distressing." This is how the double earthquake that has shaken Venezuela Marisol Tapia, a resident of Caracas. "My building seems undamaged, but the city is full of collapsed buildings," she tells ARA.

Two powerful earthquakes, separated by just 39 seconds, have shaken Venezuela and caused a tragedy of great proportions. The victim toll is still very provisional, with 235 deaths and 4,300 injuries confirmed by the country's government, but it is feared that the figure will increase considerably in the coming hours, as rescue teams can clear the enormous amount of rubble accumulated by the collapse of buildings.

“He didn’t get out today either”, says Eglis Manaure, 50, resignedly, as she climbs the stairs leading to her home in a residential block in Guatire, a town about 50 kilometers from Caracas. She smiles and pretends to be normal, but her eyes betray her: she has a profoundly sad look. "I barely sleep. At one in the morning I'm already awake watching the news to see if they've released him,” she confesses. Her husband, Enrique Parada, was arrested more than six years ago, on April 20, 2020, and since then he has been in a prison more than 450 kilometers away, in the city of Maturín, in northeastern Venezuela. To get there, Eglis takes fourteen hours by bus and can only go every three or four months. She has to choose between paying the cost of the ticket or covering the medicines he needs. Her economy doesn't allow for anything else. The man, 45, has pancreatic cancer.

The surprising indictment of former Spanish President José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero for a crime of influence peddling in relation to the rescue of the airline Plus Ultra, at the center of an international money laundering investigation with its hub in Venezuela, has placed the media spotlight on Zapatero's activities in this South American country. However, Venezuela and its relations with its regime have been a recurring source of accusations, controversies, and even judicial proceedings within a highly tense and litigious Spanish politics for over a decade.