CARACAS.- The president of the National Assembly (AN) of the Venezuelan regime, Jorge Rodríguez, made public an alleged recording that he made of Edmundo González Urrutia, elected president of Venezuela according to the minutes scrutinized, during a private meeting that took place at the residence of the ambassador of Spain in Caracas, to agree to the exile of the opponent to Spain.
According to Rodríguez, Spanish law allows recording a person without their consent. However, the regulations contradict this. Furthermore, Vice President Delcy Rodríguez and her brother, under no circumstances, can set foot in the Spanish embassy, because both are prohibited from entering the European Union (EU).
“What I just showed is what there is, it is how it happened and what happened. In Spain there can be a video or photograph record without the consent of the person who was being recorded,” said the Chavista official in a press conference.
Given this espionage action by the Chavista leaders, in a video published on the Mundo Real YouTube channel, it is questioned whether it is a crime to record a person without their consent in Spain, because the recording of González Urrutia, who was was forced to request asylum in the European country after persecution and threats from the dictatorship of Nicolás Maduro, which issued an arrest warrant against him, it was carried out in a residence that has Spanish legislation.
According to the video, there are different assumptions that can determine whether the Delcy brothers and Jorge Rodríguez committed “crime of discovery” and “revelation of secret”, as stipulated in article 197 of the Spanish Penal Code. Or if this action includes a violation of the right to honor, image and privacy of the elected president of Venezuela, who has assured that he was “coerced, blackmailed and pressured” to leave his country.
Spanish legislation establishes that it is a crime to record a person without their consent. Likewise, it may constitute a possible interference with the right to one’s own image and a violation of data protection, when the recordings are made in a space in which privacy is presumed, that is, a private space.
Contrary to what Rodríguez stated, disseminating images of public figures in their private sphere, when they are not in a public action event related to their profession, is considered illegal in Spain. Article 197 of the Spanish Penal Code establishes prison sentences of one to four years and a fine for anyone who records or reproduces the voice of another without their consent to violate their privacy.
In this situation, it is important to ask: did González Urrutia know that he was being recorded? Was the Spanish ambassador in Caracas Ramón Santos informed that this recording would be made?
Diplomatic tension
The diplomatic relationship between Spain and Venezuela came into tension after the Congress, the Spanish Senate and the European Parliament recognized the Venezuelan diplomat as the elected president of Venezuela in the July 28 elections. A step that no country in the European Union has taken so far.
After this decision, Chavismo threatened to break diplomatic, commercial and consular relations with Spain and linked the European country in a conspiracy, for which the Spaniards José María Basoa and Andrés Martínez Adasme were detained in Venezuelan territory under accusations of espionage and conspiracy to assassinate Nicolás Maduro.
Added to this is the complaint of coercion by González Urrutia to sign an alleged letter that endorses the ruling of the Supreme Court of Justice (TSJ), controlled by the regime, which validated the results announced by the National Electoral Council (CNE). Chavista, without having published the results broken down by voting stations almost two months before the election.
In response to this complaint, Chavista official Jorge Rodríguez presented at a press conference the letter signed by González Urrutia at the Spanish Embassy in Caracas, as a result of the “negotiation” for his departure from the South American country. The Rodríguez brothers affirm that the request was made by the opposition leader himself, after having remained hidden in the residence of the Netherlands ambassador since July 29.
While showing the photographs of the meeting, which was mediated by the former Spanish president, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, the president of the AN threatened to show the conversations they held at the Spanish embassy if the diplomat did not deny this accusation, while showing the photographs of the meeting at the Spanish diplomatic headquarters, in which he appears with his sister, González Urrutia, and the Spanish ambassador, Ramón Santos.
How does Spain respond to the act of espionage?
The Government of Pedro Sanchez, which maintains its position that its only role was to agree with Caracas on the paperwork regarding the car and the plane that took González Urrutia to Madrid, assured that Spain “has nothing to do” with the blackmail of which The Venezuelan diplomat would have been a victim.
This after the vice president of the European Parliament, Esteban González Pons, accused the Spanish Executive of being a “necessary collaborator” in the coup d’état that Maduro carried out in Venezuela. The also institutional vice-secretary of the Popular Party (PP), led by the opposition Alberto Núñez Feijóo, believes that the “great schemer” is former president Zapatero, who was in Caracas at the time.
These statements were rejected by Spanish Foreign Minister José Manuel Albares, who also condemned the request of different political leaders of the Spanish opposition who have demanded his resignation and that of the Spanish ambassador in Caracas, to whom the Foreign Minister claimed to have given direct instructions not to interfere. in the efforts that the opposition leader could carry out, which is why he distanced himself from “any document or negotiation” between Chavismo and González Urrutia.
