Madrid’s Dubious Connections with Outlaws

Welcoming or facilitating the passage of outlaws through its territory seems a common practice in this Spain of Podemos, which has become mired in a tissue of lies and misadventures pushing relations with Morocco to the breaking point. The so-called Brahim Ghali, head of the separatist Polisario militias who is currently receiving treatment at a hospital in Logrono, in the north of the country, is not the first criminal to visit Spain in violation of all laws and all the principles of the rule of law. Not so long ago, in January 2020 to be precise, Podemos, the party of Pablo Iglesias, without embarrassment plunged the whole of Spain into a deep controversy by welcoming Delcy Rodriguez, deputy-president of the Venezuelan totalitarian regime of Nicholas Maduro, despite the ban on entering or passing through the territory of the European Union. The government of Madrid obviously tried to deny the presence of Maduro’s collaborator on Spanish territory in violation of European sanctions against the Caracas regime. But, the evidence of his presence in the country was irrefutable. The lady even met the Minister of Equipment, José Luis Abalos, at Madrid’s Barajas airport. No less than six different versions of this incident have been put forward by the Spanish minister. Proof of the disarray of his government. The same dismay strangely gripped the authorities and even the Spanish media when Morocco revealed on April 19 that the so-called Ghali was in Spain. The information was questioned before being confirmed by Madrid 24 hours later. The Delcygate, which hit the headlines, has illustrated in the clearest way this predisposition among those in power in Spain to stop at nothing to cash in on their dark connections with rogue regimes. A report issued in 2008 under the title “Punto de cuenta al Comandante Presidente de la República Bolivariana de Venezuela” reveals that CEPS Fundación, a center for political and social studies that served as an incubator for the creation of Podemos, benefited from generous funds disbursed by the Venezuelan regime. The collusion doesn’t end there. In October 2020, the international press, including Bloomberg, reported that the US Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) was considering sanctions against the Bank of Spain for allowing senior Venezuelan regime officials to get around international sanctions and deposit money there. The case of the so-called Brahim Ghali and his entry into Spain with a fake identity thus confirms a modus operandi of the current Spanish leaders. The reception of this criminal responsible for the death of several dozen of Spaniards in addition to rapes, torture and disappearances, is nothing new. It reveals the true face of a populist movement that has never hesitated to ally with the devil in order to fill its coffers. Its connivance with the Maduro regime remains a textbook case. The Spain of Podemos has played, according to reports mentioned by the international press, a crucial role in the maintenance of the Maduro regime in power, in particular by facilitating it access to European markets for the smuggling of vast quantities of cocaine. This is a puzzling attitude that encourages the bloodthirsty Maduro regime to continue its oppression of the Venezuelan people with total impunity. The PanAm daily reports, in this regard, that members of Spanish security agencies have facilitated the transit of cocaine from Venezuela to Europe via the north-eastern region of Galicia. The information refers to the long history of complicity between Maduro and Podemos, a complicity that continues until today and which has enabled the movement to raise funds which paved the way for it to infiltrate the Spanish security agencies that were once impenetrable, including the Consejo Nacional des Inteligencia (National Intelligence Council) in which Pablo Iglesias recently won a seat. It is a story rich in lessons on the real intentions of the movement in power in Spain which seems to have found in the aging generals of Algiers a new source of income to finance their ambitions that risk condemning the Iberian Kingdom to isolation.