Spain will grant citizenship to exiled Venezuelan opposition figure Leopoldo Lopez, who faced a government attempt to strip him of his Venezuelan nationality, the foreign minister said on Monday.
“I confirm that Leopoldo Lopez has made that request and tomorrow it will be submitted to cabinet” for deliberation, Jose Manuel Albares told RAC1 radio, adding that such matters “are always approved”.
This quicker, unconventional route “has been used because there are some documents that, due to the very special situation in which Leopoldo Lopez finds himself, it was impossible for him to produce them”, Albares added.
Last year, the Venezuelan government asked the country’s Supreme Court to revoke Lopez’s citizenship for allegedly supporting a US military invasion of the country at a time when Washington had deployed warships to the Caribbean.
Lopez joined a failed military uprising in 2019 against the government of Venezuela’s former strongman president, Nicolas Maduro, and fled to Madrid in 2020 after taking refuge at the Spanish ambassador’s residence.
A former mayor of Caracas’s upmarket Chacao district, Lopez had also been sentenced to nearly 14 years in prison in 2015 for allegedly inciting deadly anti-government protests.
AFP
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