Venezuela says opposition presidential candidate González has left the country for asylum in Spain

Venezuela’s opposition presidential candidate in its disputed election, Edmundo González Urrutia, has left the South American country after seeking asylum in Spain, according to a senior Venezuelan official.

The surprise departure by the candidate who the opposition and several foreign governments consider the legitimate winner of July’s presidential race is a serious blow to efforts to unseat President Nicolás Maduro and comes just days after the government ordered his arrest.

Venezuelan Vice President Delcy Rodríguez said in a message on Instagram that González, who has not been seen since the election, had sought refuge in recent days at the Spanish Embassy in Caracas. She said the government decided to grant González safe passage out of the country to help restore “the country’s political peace and tranquility.”

Neither González nor opposition leader Maria Corina Machado have commented.

Meanwhile, Spain’s center-left government said the decision to abandon Venezuela was González’s alone and he departed on a plane sent by the country’s air force.

“Spain is committed to the political rights and physical integrity of all Venezuelans,” Foreign Minister José Manuel Albares said on the X social media platform.

González, a 75-year-old former diplomat, was a last-minute stand-in when opposition leader Maria Corina Machado was banned from running. Previously unknown to most Venezuelans, his campaign rapidly ignited the hopes of millions eager for change after a decade-long economic free fall.

Though Maduro was declared the winner of the July vote, most Western governments have yet to recognize his victory and are demanding that authorities publish a breakdown of votes. Meanwhile, tally sheets collected by opposition volunteers from more than two-thirds of the electronic voting machines and published online indicate that González won by a more than 2-to-1 margin.

The tally sheets have long been considered the ultimate proof of election results in Venezuela. In previous presidential elections, the National Electoral Council published online the results of each of the more than 30,000 voting machines, but the Maduro-controlled panel did not release any data this time, blaming an alleged cyberattack mounted from North Macedonia by the opposition.

Atty. Gen. Tarek William Saab, a staunch Maduro ally, sought González’s arrest after he failed to appear three times in connection to a criminal investigation into what the government calls an act of electoral sabotage.

Saab told reporters that the voting records the opposition shared online were forged and an attempt to undermine the National Electoral Council.

Experts from the United Nations and the Carter Center, which at the invitation of Maduro’s government observed the election, determined the results announced by electoral authorities lacked credibility. In a statement critical of the election, the U.N. experts stopped short of validating the opposition’s claim to victory, but they said the voting records it published online appear to exhibit all of the original security features.