Esteban González Pons, a spokesman for the PP, accused the Spanish government of being “an accomplice of the regime of Nicolás Maduro in the plan to neuter the democratic opposition” and condemned what he described as the “connivance of Spain in a coup d’état”.

Venezuela's former presidential candidate Edmundo Gonzalez said on Friday he sought diplomatic refuge after being told President Nicolas Maduro's security forces were "coming for you." Gonzalez, whom the opposition insist was the real winner of a July election awarded to Maduro,